


Providence Lost

by MirrorMystic



Series: Among Eagles [17]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, F/F, Gen, Lesbians in Space, Multi, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:27:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23106955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorMystic/pseuds/MirrorMystic
Summary: Malice has taken Providence. Sister Nyx, daughter of Despair, has unleashed a calamity in the very heart of the Sol Systems Alliance. Now, daemons rain from the sky and swarm across the land, a tidal wave of flesh and fangs that’s grown far beyond the young priestess’ control.The Order and its champions stand against the tide. The counterattack has begun, and the humble crew of the Sparrow flies alongside the Valkyries, the Order elite, eager to dive into the fray and bask in the glory of war.But war isn’t glorious. It takes. It destroys. And Aabha, who’s dreamed for years of being a hero and charging to the rescue of a planet in peril, will soon learn a painful lesson: no victory is assured. And no victory comes without a cost…
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: Among Eagles [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/987408
Kudos: 5





	1. Planetfall

**Author's Note:**

> We're back, baby! And we're in full-on war story mode, so please be aware that the action in this and coming chapters is gonna get pretty intense. I hope you all enjoy the read!
> 
> Follow me on Twitter at @mystic_writes !

~*~   
  
_ “Strike teams, board your craft and prepare for sequential launch.” _   
  
Lily took a deep breath. She felt a hand on her shoulder-- Lila’s. She linked their fingers together and squeezed, blowing out an anxious sigh. Over her shoulder, Vincent met her eyes with a nod.    
  
“Strike One, ready for launch,” Crane reported. She turned, finding Lily’s eyes across the deck of the Sparrow, Jaki and Shanti stony-faced behind her. As the chrome petals of the Remora’s hull slid closed around them, Crane dipped her chin-- a fraction of an inch.    
  
Yuna pressed a button on her console. The Sparrow’s cargo bay doors opened with a huge roar of rushing wind. Murky brown clouds raced past, the sky stained like fetid mud. Shadows shot past, some trailing the flare of sublight engines, others festooned with tentacles and gibbering, fleshy limbs.    
  
Crane threw a lever on her console. Her Remora shot out of the bay, leaving a trail of azure lightning shivering down the cargo bay.    
  
“Strike One away!” Yuna called.    
  
Lily took another deep breath. She shook out her fingers, double-checking the controls on her console, muttering launch sequences under her breath. She flipped a switch, disengaging the Remora’s docking clamps. She revved the Remora’s gravitic drive, the anti-gravity halo under the skimmer shining bright. She pulled a lever down, gently easing the skimmer into position along the launch catapult’s energized rail.    
  
Then Lily reached into her coat, and clicked on her comm. A holopic of Aabha and Kit shone to life on the corner of her console.   
  
“Strike Two, ready for launch,” Lily breathed.    
  
Lily lit the drives. The Sparrow’s launch catapult hurled them out the door, wreathed in azure lightning. Immediately, Lila and Vincent’s consoles came to life, the Remora’s mounted guns swiveling into position and stitching blurts of lasfire across Providence’s muddy sky.    
  
“Strike Two away!” Yuna announced.    
  
Yuna stood before the Sparrow’s open cargo bay doors, her white sundress whipping around her form. She breathed deep of Providence’s scent: lush, fertile farmland despoiled, polluted by the acrid, corrosive touch of Malice. She curled her hands into fists, an aura of pale, frost-blue light shimmering above her skin.    
  
_ “Ready to stretch your wings, babe?” _ Robyn asked over the shipboard intercom.    
  
Yuna grinned.    
  
“Strike Three, ready for launch.”   
  
Yuna took a running leap out of the Sparrow’s cargo bay, haloed in pale blue light. A cloud of mist engulfed the Sparrow, flickering from within. There was a flash, a sound like distant thunder and shattering glass-- and then a gleaming white dragon soared out of the fog, wings of magic and muscle flying alongside the Sparrow’s metal and chrome.    
  
The skies were choked with foes. Stolen or captured Alliance dropships, their emblems burned away or painted over with eye-watering, unholy insignia, flew alongside more esoteric craft. Drop pods that were some bizarre mix of meat and machine, filled with risen troopers still wearing the tattered remnants of their PDF gear. Strange, fleshy growths, festooned with tentacles and filled to bursting with ghouls and other horrors. Twitching, living meat-ships covered in claws and fangs, with gunports that fired not bullets but teeth and sharpened bone.    
  
They died like all the rest, set alight with lasfire, bombarded with missiles, or iced over with frost and getting smashed to powder as they hit the ground.    
  
Yuna opened her mouth, white light gathering between her jaws, and spat a beam of ice that shredded a troopship’s engines and sent it plummeting. She landed atop another dropship, and crunched her claws into its hull. She tore open the troop compartment like it was made of tinfoil, the ghouls within shrieking as the wind whipped them away. She took the broken ship in her jaws, curled her sinuous form and leveraged the ship into a throw. It smashed into another ship, igniting its drive core on impact. The two ships went up in flames, their smoking metal carcasses falling in plumes of black smoke.    
  
Lasfire stitched through the air, not all of it friendly. A stream of fat red bolts punched into Yuna’s back, vaporizing the protective layer of frost and scorching the scales beneath. Yuna hissed in pain, and flexed her fingers, willing her magic to renew her damaged frost armor. More lasbolts whipped past, and she drew her arms around herself, curling into a spin.    
  
Arcane sigils coiled like bracelets around her ankles and wrists. Magicked icicles flew from her grasp, bursting half a dozen fleshy drop pods and consigning their passengers to a grisly death by gravity. But the gunship was still on her tail, its lasguns blazing.    
  
Yuna spread her wings, braking in mid-air. The gunship shot past, now exposed from behind. White light gathered between Yuna’s jaws--   
  
A burst of lasfire ripped the gunship in half. Yuna looked up, a shadow falling across her.    
  
Robyn flashed her a grin from the cockpit of the Sparrow, before raising two fingers to her lips and blowing her a kiss. Crane and Lily flew into formation beside them, followed by fellow fighters and dropships bearing myriad flags: the Holy Knights in red and gold, the Lilean League in black and violet, the Sol Systems Alliance in blue and white, the Emerald Court in leaf-green and autumn-yellow--   
  
Angels. Demons. Humans. Fae. All of them united within the Order. A galaxy united against the Enemy of all life.    
  
As the forces of Malice descended upon Providence from the foul, noxious light of the Breach, the Order’s counterattack descended upon them, a Sparrow and a dragon leading the charge.    
  
~*~   
  
A hissing shriek keened across the sky. A beam of coruscating green light seared across the firmament and slammed head-on into a Malefic carrier. Layers of hull armor vaporized under the assault, the beam coring the ship right down the middle. Then, the beam split into smaller rays, radiating outward in thirteen directions-- and the carrier came apart, shredded from the inside out and annihilated in a nimbus of emerald light.    
  
The ruined ship fell to pieces, neatly sectioned like sliced fruit, each wedge glowing white-hot at the edges and trailing debris and molten metal. Its killer slithered through the erupting fireball and plume of black smoke, dark hull armor glistening like a serpent’s scales.    
  
The Alliance cruiser  _ Basilisk _ was truly living up to its name: snaking its way through the chaotic firefight in the skies over Providence, keeping a watchful eye on the myriad battles unfolding below. And anything foolish enough to look it in the eyes died an instant later in a blaze of emerald light.    
  
“Kill confirmed,” the gunnery officer announced from her post.   
  
“Well done,” Soren said with a nod. “Recharge the main batteries and prepare for the next volley.”   
  
The deck of the Basilisk thrummed with power beneath Soren’s feet. The cruiser’s primary weapons were a coordinated array of thirteen forward facing plasma lances. ‘The Lucky Thirteen’, the crew called them. Ill-suited for lengthy brawling matches with capital ships, the Basilisk killed its foes in a single volley so it wouldn’t have to take another. Tremendous force, but carefully, precisely applied. Single kills that turned the tides of battles.    
  
As Director of Order Intelligence and overseer of the Order’s network of spies and assassins, it was only fitting.    
  
Soren stood before the holographic strategium display on the bridge of the Basilisk, both hands braced on a sheathed sword as if it were a cane. The display was vast, filling the bridge as if it were a university lecture hall, projecting a three-dimensional map of the frantic aerial battle around them and the forces massing on the ground below. The Basilisk weaved its way through the chaotic melee, the sleek cruiser slipping past the booming exchanges of larger vessels.    
  
There was a chime at his wrist. Soren lifted his comm.    
  
“Go ahead, Scout Master.”   
  
The holographic form of Pathfinder Imani, representative of the Navigator’s Guild and sitting member of the Watchtower Council, appeared in miniature in Soren’s cupped palm.    
  
_ “Director,” _ Imani nodded.  _ “My forces are ready to deploy. It won’t be easy finding the source of this Breach when the distortion field covers the whole planet. But the Fae are the best trackers in the galaxy, magical or mundane. If anyone can do it, we can.” _   
  
“Good hunting, Imani,” Soren said. “Lorelei and Admiral Weiss may be fighting battles, but it’s your task that will win us the war.”   
  
_ “No pressure,” _ Imani chuckled, her curls bouncing.  _ “Order asset Glass, out.” _   
  
Imani’s wing of dropships arced away on plumes of white smoke. Soren watched them go, half a dozen colored blips in an arrowhead, diving for the surface. They were just a few among many, lost in the crowd of hundreds of craft choking the Basilisk’s immediate airspace. Huge capital ships lumbered by, above and below, smaller, nimbler craft following at their flanks. All the while, landers and drop pods fell like rain.    
  
Something flashed through the air, too small to be picked up on the strategium display. It glinted past the viewport on the Basilisk’s bridge, a glint of pearl-white.    
  
There was a series of loud bangs, like thunder directly overhead, and the deck of the Basilisk lurched under Soren’s feet.    
  
“Report!” he called out.    
  
“Multiple impacts,” the detection officer responded. “Drop pods have breached our shields and have begun boring into our hull.”   
  
“All security stations, stand by to repel boarders,” Soren announced.   
  
“Sir,” the drive officer called. “The pods’ home carrier is above us, outside our main weapons’ firing arc. Shall we move into a position to give Gunnery a clear shot?”   
  
“No,” Soren ordered. “Begin evasive action. Gunnery, you have your list of ground-based strategic targets. Commence long-range bombardment and do not deviate. Concentrate our efforts on shaping and coordinating the battle on the ground.”   
  
“But sir,” the gunnery officer protested. “What about the battle up here?”   
  
There it was again, glinting outside the bridge viewport. Red, white, and gold.    
  
Soren smiled.    
  
“The Valkyries have the sky.”   
  
~*~   
  
Drop pods spilled out of the Malefic carrier like maggots out of rotting meat. The first wave slammed against the Basilisk’s shields, deflected away in cascades of fire and debris or annihilated outright upon contact with the energized field. But these first sacrifices tore ragged holes in the shields, and pods swarmed in before the Basilisk’s shield batteries could seal the gaps.    
  
The Enemy rode twisted amalgams of stolen tech and eldritch organics. Some of the pods punched into the Basilisk’s hull and began cutting their way inside with plasma torches and diamond-tipped drills. Others latched onto the hull with fleshy appendages, gnawing through the ship’s hull armor with rows upon rows of lamprey teeth.    
  
Masked troopers in dark coats and glowing red visors emerged from the pods, anchored to the deck with mag-boots, flanked by scurrying, scuttling things that needed little more than claws and their own inhuman strength to cling to the ship’s hull.    
  
The Basilisk’s point defense batteries swiveled until they were flush with the hull, struggling to swat these ticks from its skin. A hapless gun battery went up in flames under a withering barrage of lasfire. A second was blasted clean out of its mounting by a volley of rifle grenades. A third was mobbed by ghouls, its twin laser cannons firing helplessly as the horde tore it to pieces with their bare hands.   
  
There was a glint in the sky. A ghoul lifted its head, its claws tangled in circuitry and its mouth full of scrap metal.    
  
A crimson comet exploded into the hull like a missile and annihilated the swarm of ghouls in a blaze of light.    
  
Mirai crouched amidst the spiraling flames, her spear planted in the Basilisk’s hull, her head bowed as if in prayer. She rose, her crimson cape billowing at her shoulders, pearl-white armor gleaming in the sunlight, and punched her spear into the sky.    
  
“Valkyries!” she bellowed. “Faith and fury!”   
  
The Sisters of Order asset Talon descended upon the Basilisk’s hull, their wings leaving shining contrails in the air. They shot through the boarding parties massing on the Basilisk’s hull, firing their lances as they flew. Troopers fell by the dozens, perforated by lasfire, cleaved apart by sweeping spear slashes, or simply smashed to a pulp as a Valkyrie flew into him at attack speed.    
  
In the shining storm of red, white, and gold, two Sisters stood apart-- one, a reaper in black and bone-white, the other, a war goddess in brilliant, blazing saffron.    
  
Kit cut a hapless trooper apart with a scissoring strike of her twin blades, curled into a roll as she hit the deck and kept on running. She took a wind-assisted leap through a squad of enemy troopers, moving so fast that the vacuum trail left in her wake yanked them off their feet. Kit took a sharp turn and darted out of the way, pulverizing the squad against a wall. Kit laughed in delight, blasting another hapless trio to their deaths with a gust of magicked wind, and raced down the length of the ship-- only to skid to a halt and catch herself with an arm around Aabha’s waist.    
  
“Try not to have  _ too _ much fun,” Aabha chided.    
  
“No promises,” Kit grinned.    
  
Kit stole a quick kiss and then she was off again, twin swords shining in her hands, the wind at her heels. Aabha’s smile turned into a grimace as she took up her spear, beset by ghouls. She cut apart one, two, three of the snarling things in quick succession with quick, scything strokes, glanced beyond and saw the numbers coming her way. Aabha took a deep breath, beheaded a charging ghoul with a disdainful flick of her wrist, spun her spear in her grip and stuck it tip-down in the Basilisk’s hull.    
  
With both hands free, Aabha flexed her fingers, shining runes shimmering to life around her wrists. As the brunt of the horde came charging in, Aabha thrust her hands forward. A brilliant wave of saffron fire erupted from her palms and stopped the charge in its tracks, obliterating the lead ranks into ash and dust and sending the edges of the swarm scattering, wreathed in flames.    
  
But one challenger would not be so easily deterred. A horned daemon, twice the height of a man and three times as broad, weathered Aabha’s assault and charged heedless through the flames. It sprinted through the fire, its fur blackened and burning, and smashed a meaty fist into Aabha’s chest.    
  
The impact hurled Aabha through the air. She caught her spear, still wedged in the deck, and flipped to land on her feet. Immediately she sank to one knee, wheezing, clutching her chest. Above her, the minotaur snorted and scuffed the deck with its hooves, getting ready for another charge.    
  
It shot forward, bellowing. With a twitch of her fingers, the chakrams at Aabha’s hips flew from their mountings, shining with saffron fire. The ring blades sliced out the backs of the beast’s knees. It stumbled forward, barking in dismay, and in one clean motion, Aabha rose to her feet, spun her spear, and cut off the daemon’s head.    
  
Lasbolts pinged off of Aabha’s armor. She winced, reflexively raising her arm. Her chakrams flew up at her command and spun in mid-air, lasfire cracking against the makeshift shield.    
  
A pane of golden light manifested between Aabha and the shooters. She glanced beside her and saw Brother Taven, his staff in hand.   
  
Malefic troopers poured lasbolts and hard rounds into Taven’s summoned barrier, hoping to overcome it with sheer firepower. The barrier cracked and warped under the sustained barrage. Taven whispered an invocation to his staff, and gently tapped it against the deck.    
  
His barrier shattered and imploded, shredding the gunmen in a hail of golden shrapnel.    
  
“Heads up!” a Sister cried.    
  
Above them, another drop pod forced its way through the Basilisk’s damaged shields and punched into the deck. Docking clamps and boarding drills whirred into position, ready to cut the boarding party’s way into the ship.    
  
Taven raised his staff in one hand, the other closing around an orb of white lightning gathering at its head. He swiped his hand aside, drawing a thunderbolt from his staff like a sword from a sheath, and hurled it across the deck. The bolt of white lightning surged into the pod and sent it grinding to a halt, arcing electricity and weeping smoke.    
  
A dazed Malefic trooper forced open a side hatch. Mirai impaled him on her spear, and leveraged him into a two-handed throw that flung him right into the crosshairs of a nearby point defense battery. She emptied a las cell into the boarding pod on full auto, switched to her lance’s anti-armor plasma beam, and sheared the boarding pod right off the Basilisk’s hull.    
  
Mirai stabbed her spear under the last bit of pod jammed into the deck, still weeping smoke and molten metal. She levered it out with her lance and tossed it over the edge of the ship with the utmost disdain.    
  
“Clear!” she thundered.    
  
“Clear!” the Sisters chorused back.    
  
Above them, the Basilisk’s frayed shields finally began to reseal themselves. Kit and Aabha found each other on the deck and exchanged nods. Mirai’s comm chirped.    
  
“Go,” she said.    
  
_ “Talon Leader, this is Basilisk. Your assistance is most appreciated. Well done.” _   
  
“Thank you, Director,” Mirai said, unable to stifle her smile.    
  
_ “Be advised, we have a hostile cruiser inbound, and our main batteries will not be ready to fire for a few moments yet…” _   
  
Mirai saw it-- a lumbering hulk of ragged metal and fetid, fleshy growths, gun ports above and clawed tentacles below. Mirai furrowed her brows.    
  
“Not a problem,” she growled. “Sisters! Follow me!”   
  
Mirai’s wings appeared at her back in a flash of white and gold. She took a running leap off the side of the Basilisk, plunging into a dive with her spear at the ready, her Sisters at her heels.    
  
“Starfall formation!” Mirai ordered.    
  
They drew in to a tight cone, shields close, spears at the ready. They plunged towards the enemy ship, picking up speed, point defense fire flashing past.    
  
A shadow fell across the cruiser. The Talon swooped in, gunports blazing, missiles streaking away on plumes of white smoke. The brunt of the cruiser’s point defenses went up in flames, silencing the storm of lasfire flying up at the team. The enemy was open. The way was clear…   
  
“Execute!” Mirai roared.    
  
As one, the Valkyries fired their lances. They broke formation and scattered across the upper surface of the cruiser, raking their anti-armor lance beams across the cruiser’s hull. A spiderweb of golden plasma scythed through the ship. Explosions rippled across its surface as the criss-crossing beams found ammunition dumps, fuel reserves, drive cores.    
  
Truly, the Valkyries were the fire that rained from heaven. And as the enemy cruiser exploded above, haloing the team in golden light, the Talon swooped underneath them, its drop bays open and waiting to receive them.    
  
“Regroup,” Mirai ordered. She flew into the Talon from the side, held up her spear, and locked it into one of the racks set into the deck, forming a pole she could use to keep herself steady.    
  
The other Sisters followed suit, locking their spears into position and bracing themselves against them as the wind whipped past the Talon’s open doors. Taven locked his staff into place and joined Mirai at the head of the deck. Kit, lacking a spear, sheathed her twin blades and made do with an arm around Aabha’s waist.    
  
With everyone accounted for, the Talon’s side doors slid shut with a pressurized hiss, reducing the howling wind and constant gunfire to a distant, dull roar.    
  
Mirai took a deep breath, and let it out slow. She could feel Taven sidling up beside her without even turning around.    
  
“Report,” she said quietly.    
  
“Ship kill confirmed,” Taven said. “No casualties.”   
  
“Who knows how long that will last,” Mirai blew out a sigh.    
  
She glanced up, finding Aabha and Kit lingering nearby. She crossed over to join them, greeting them with a nod.    
  
“You two acquitted yourselves well,” Mirai said.    
  
Kit grinned, crossing her arms. “Thanks. You were pretty badass, yourself.”   
  
“We’re tracing Archmagus Kalani’s badge signal to her last known location,” Mirai reported, nodding to the holodisplay above her head. “By our reports, Senior Agents Morgan and Sylwyn Telerian were also last seen in that area. But I should warn you, this information may be out of date. As you can see, the situation on the ground has been… evolving.”   
  
“I’ll take it. Thank you, Sister,” Aabha nodded. She reached out, touching Mirai’s arm. “Are you alright?”   
  
Mirai’s breath hitched in her throat. She met Aabha’s gaze, unable to lie to those eyes.    
  
“...No casualties.” Mirai exhaled. “For now.”   
  
“You’re doing great,” Aabha urged.    
  
A moment of warmth and gratitude flicked across Mirai’s eyes. Then, just as quickly, the stoic mask of command slipped back into place.    
  
“Time to target is ten minutes,” Mirai said. “Prepare to deploy.”   
  
“Yes, ser.”   
  
Mirai returned to Taven’s side, and Aabha returned to Kit’s, a playful arm snaking around Aabha’s waist.    
  
“Man,” Kit chuckled, “she is just so stiff.”   
  
“She’s a soldier,” Aabha said. “And she’s afraid.”   
  
“She shouldn’t be,” Kit shrugged. “We’re kicking ass out there. I dunno about you, but I’m having a blast.”   
  
Aabha blew out a weary sigh.    
  
“...I’m scared,” Aabha admitted. “This is all just… so much. We only broke atmo two hours ago, and it feels like we’ve been fighting for days. I don’t know how long I can--”   
  
“Hey. Hey, come on,” Kit urged. She reached up, cupping Aabha’s cheek. “Lighten up, babe. It’s gonna be alright. Hell, it might even be fun!”   
  
“We’re not here to have  _ fun _ , Kit!” Aabha snapped, pulling away. “This isn’t a game. This is war. It’s not a sport. It’s a means to an end.”   
  
Aabha huffed, and glanced at the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kit offering her hand. She exhaled, and linked their fingers with a squeeze.    
  
“Maybe that end will come sooner than we think,” Kit said gently. “Maybe we’ll find this VIP, find Morgan and Syl, and then we’ll all have time to catch up on our ride back to the Sparrow.”   
  
“Maybe,” Aabha nodded. “...Hopefully.”   
  
Aabha pulled Kit close. Kit leaned up on her toes and gave Aabha a kiss. As they parted, they lingered in each other’s arms, Kit’s head tucked under Aabha’s chin. They stood, swaying, savoring the embrace.   
  
A yellow warning klaxon blared across the drop deck. Mirai stamped her spear against the ground.    
  
“Prepare to drop!” Mirai announced. “Three minutes!”   
  
Aabha and Kit reluctantly parted, squeezing each other’s hands.    
  
“...Lily’s waiting,” Aabha whispered.    
  
“Yeah,” Kit smiled. “Let’s get this done.”   
  
~*~   
  
Haloed in the foul green light of the Breach, little Nyx stood alone.    
  
She stood on a craggy plateau overlooking the sea. Above her, the sky was stained, twisted by the toxic green light of the Breach and streaked with black smoke, littered with scrap metal and blooms of flame. The blazing reports of hundreds of gun batteries and missile impacts lit the sky like lightning.    
  
Bodies were falling into the sea. Dropships, reduced to burning metal husks, dousing themselves in the sea to become sunken tombs. The broken remnants of capital ships, buried in the silt and sand like the bones of dead gods, the modern day incarnations of the Kraken and Leviathan of old. Corpses fell into the sea, only to be washed ashore and picked at by scavengers or smashed to nothing against the base of the cliffs. Alliance and Enemy both; a feast for crows.    
  
Nyx stood, and stared, at the ongoing devastation, her master’s cane clutched like a staff in her hands. Voices swirled in the storm. Those of the living, stained with fear, anger, desperation, or stubborn courage. Those of the dead, silent, sitting in judgment. Waiting. Watching.    
  
But of all the voices cascading through the aether, there was one that Nyx wished to hear most of all. The voice of her mother. The goddess who made her, and then left her, falling into slumber after her task was done only to awake, years later, and discover she was still…   
  
Alone.    
  
“What have I done?” Nyx whispered, to everyone, and to no one. But the voices of the dead gave no response.    
  
Nyx gazed down at the cane in her hands. Beautifully made, dark, lacquered wood set with two engraved serpents coiling up the hilt, their eyes glinting like emeralds. The cane of the rogue sorcerer Maxwell.    
  
User. Deceiver. Meddler in forces beyond his understanding or control.    
  
And here she was, still following his example.    
  
Fury surged through Nyx’s veins, bright and blinding. She grit her teeth and snapped Maxwell’s cane over her knee. There was a sharp crack and a flash of volatile magic, and then the lights in the twin serpents’ eyes went out for good. Nyx pitched the two broken pieces over the cliff, and watched them vanish into the dark below.    
  
Nyx drew the Rift Needle from her belt, poised to hurl it into the ocean-- but something stopped her. She paused, blowing out a breath. She raised the artifact, studying it in the light of the Breach.    
  
A luminous green crystal. A metal ring, inscribed with arcane sigils, surrounding the crystal as if it were the handguard on a sword. One end of the crystal extended past the ring and ended in a point.    
  
So much like a knife.    
  
What had she said, when she’d sacrificed her master to the Rift in an act of petty vengeance?    
  
“Do not be afraid,” Nyx whispered.    
  
She lay the sharpened edge of the Rift Needle against her wrist, and closed her eyes.    
  
“You will never be alone.”   
  
There was a flash. Nyx yelped as the Rift Needle pulsed in her hands, flying out of her grip as if it had a will of its own. It rose above her, resonating with the Breach high above. The central crystal began to shine, the circular guard splitting into three and spinning like gyroscopic rings.    
  
A shockwave of unearthly power shot through the air and threw Nyx off her feet. She cried out in alarm, and rose to one knee, her cloak billowing in an otherworldly wind.    
  
Storm clouds formed in the distance, lit from within by a strange, ruddy twilight. They swept across the water, engulfing the base of the cliff. Hundreds of shining red eyes shone like stars within the cloud.    
  
A figure manifested from within the cloud. An entity, dressed in a sober, dark suit, as if in mourning. He had his head in his hands, weeping.    
  
There was a piercing cry from above, and something shot through the sky. A spear plunged into the earth, its blade as black as night. Tendrils of black smoke coiled around the spear, weaving together into threads, into a ragged black robe-- until at last a second entity emerged from the smoke, deathly pale with sadistic glee in his eyes, black-feathered wings sprouting from his back.    
  
The Rift Needle shuddered and deactivated, falling inert. It fell out of the air and Nyx fumbled it back into her grasp.    
  
The second entity plucked his spear out of the ground with deathly pale fingers. He turned towards her and she flinched-- his eyes were blackened, save for an iris that shone white like the moon. He looked over her shoulder, to the battle raging in the distance, and his gaunt features twisted into a wicked grin.    
  
“...what fun,” he laughed. “What fun, what fun…!”   
  
“My lords…?” Nyx whimpered.    
  
The spearman rounded on her in a flash, his body trailing black smoke as he moved. He smiled, still snickering, putting a finger to his lips.    
  
“Hush now, little one,” he said. “And fear not. We’ll take it from here.”   
  
He took off, cackling, clutching his black-bladed spear. Nyx watched his black wings recede into the distance, before flinching as she felt a hand on her shoulder.    
  
_ “A whole world, ripe for the harvest,” _ the first entity spoke, his softspoken voice like a lonely wind across desert dunes.  _ “We are honored to accept your invitation.” _   
  
Nyx turned towards him-- and recoiled, gasping. Without his hands covering his face, she could see his eyes. And they were… nothing. Empty, gaping sockets, the edges crumbling into black sand.    
  
“Who are you?” Nyx trembled. “ _ What _ are you?”   
  
Seth, the Aspect of Decay, clasped his hands together in reverence.    
  
_ “We are the end.” _   
  
~*~


	2. Harbingers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which lightning strikes twice, but in not quite the same spot.

~*~  
  
The sun was setting over Providence Academy’s Cygnus campus. The buildings were dark and bare; the courtyards were overrun. Malefic troopers milled around, faceless beneath their red-lensed visors and clutching stolen Alliance rifles to their chests, chattering to one another in their warped, inhuman language. Packs of ghouls and mutated daemon-beasts prowled the grounds. Every so often they would snarl and swipe at one another, marking their territory, but their pack leaders would growl and set them back on track. They weren’t here to fight among themselves. There was plenty of fresher meat to go around.   
  
High above, the toxic green light of the Breach hung in the sky like a false moon. Battles still raged, both in space and throughout the atmosphere. Blooms of fire lit the evening sky with new constellations, before streaking down to earth, auroras painted in smoke and flame. Gun batteries flashed like lightning. Missile impacts rumbled like thunder.   
  
But down here, so far from the battle raging above, one could almost pretend the world was at peace. One could look out, among the roaming ghouls and stoic troopers, that this was an Academy for the damned, and today was just like any other day. One could almost pretend that the droning in the distance, rapidly approaching, was the buzz of cicadas in the summer; the shrill whistling, merely birdsong.   
  
Almost.   
  
A masked trooper lifted his head at the sound of whistling whipping over the trees. He barked in alarm, shouldered his rifle, even managed to fire a few shots.   
  
Then the missile annihilated him and the surrounding hillside in a nimbus of fire.   
  
Explosions rippled across the campus grounds, the lush courtyards and fountains of the student commons vanishing in huge pillars of fire and upturned earth. A dozen missiles stitched a line across the square and blanketed the courtyard in a thick curtain of black smoke.   
  
Order dropship Talon shot into the square, its rocket pods still smoking. The wind wash from its engines blasted away the curtain of smoke, only for its swivel-guns to fill the air with a storm of suppressive lasfire. The Talon’s side bays opened with a pressurized hiss.   
  
Mirai hit the ground, Taven beside her, the other Sisters right behind.  
  
“Sigrun, your wing sweeps the north side,” Mirai commanded. “Bryn, the south.”  
  
“Yes, ser!”  
  
“The rest of you, with me. Let’s move out!”  
  
Mirai’s officers hurried off to their posts. Mirai stamped her spear against the ground, collapsing the haft until the spear was half its length-- effectively turning it into a lasrifle and bayonet. Behind her, Aabha followed suit, while Kit sheathed one of her swords and drew her pistol in her off-hand. No more open air and fancy flying-- this was going to be claustrophobic, close combat work.   
  
Mirai didn’t need to look to know that Taven was right behind her. But she glanced over her shoulder, and met Aabha and Kit’s eyes with a nod. Then she was off, charging through the smoke, her crimson cape billowing behind.   
  
Acid yellow lasbolts rained down at them from above. Lance beams of golden yellow plasma rose up to meet them, carving into balconies and sending shooters recoiling from their windows. They raced across the concourse, firing as they went.   
  
They charged up a flight of stone steps leading up to a pair of double doors sealed with a pulsing electric blue arcane sigil. Mirai experimentally struck it with her spear, her blows deflected with a crackle of lightning.   
  
Mirai turned and dropped to one knee in one fluid motion, her spear braced against her shoulder. Aabha and Kit joined her, Kit’s pistol braced on her sword arm. Tucked up against the doorway, shooters on the upper floors couldn’t get a proper angle; but ghouls and pack beasts could smell fresh meat, and they came bounding through the smoke, jaws snapping and snarling.   
  
The team was ready for them, hosing fire in all directions. Ghouls fell in droves, perforated with lasfire or cleaved apart by golden lance beams. Aabha flicked her wrist and sent her chakrams sailing into the fray, moving as if alive, striking at the flanks of the onrushing horde. When one ghoul got too close for comfort, Kit punched her sword across its throat-- and the sigils along the blade shone white, unleashing a torrent of brilliant fire that immolated the ghoul’s brethren right behind and stopped their charge in its tracks.   
  
Taven finished scribing his counterspell into the sigil sealing the doors. The arcane seal broke with a sound like shattering glass, and the team burst through the doors, guns blazing, blades flashing. As Mirai and Taven pushed ahead with a dozen of the Sisters dutifully at their heels, Aabha hesitated at the doors, studying the remnants of the electric blue runic circle.   
  
“Aabha?” Kit wondered, sidling up beside her.   
  
Aabha gently brushed a gloved hand against the sigil. It shimmered faintly at her touch. It felt… warm, somehow. Familiar.   
  
A burst of lasfire cracked against the doorframe. Aabha flinched; Kit yanked her down and fired off a burst of her own, dropping a Malefic trooper into the mud.   
  
“Aabha, what is it? We gotta keep moving,” Kit urged.   
  
“It’s nothing,” Aabha muttered. “Just a feeling. But you’re right-- we should catch up with Mirai.”  
  
She certainly wasn’t hard to find. Mirai and the Valkyries left a trail of smouldering bodies in their wake, troopers and ghouls wisping smoke from lasfire, slashing wounds still glowing from the heat of energized blades. The team had gathered in the ruined remains of a student center. It had seen better days; tables were upturned. Couches were riddled with gunfire, their stuffing ripped out. The room stank of death and desperation.   
  
In the corner, huddled under a desk, were the results of an ill-fated last stand. Kit winced and tugged on Aabha’s hand, stopping her from getting closer and getting a better look. Aabha exhaled and closed her eyes, murmuring a prayer under her breath.   
  
“We’ll split up,” Mirai was saying, huddled with her team over a flickering holomap. “Three to a fireteam. Take this place room by room. No stragglers. We sweep this floor, loop around and regroup back here. Then we move upstairs. Taven, you stay here. If we find any survivors, we’ll drop them off here with you. You six, watch his back. The rest of you, move out.”  
  
Mirai turned, catching Aabha and Kit’s eyes. Aabha nodded.  
  
“You two,” Mirai nodded. “You’re with me.”  
  
~*~  
  
Strike Two soared over Providence, just another ship among thousands. Despite being in the midst of a bewildering aerial battle, the Remora’s display consoles distilled their surroundings into simple shapes and colors-- fighter and capital ship, friend or foe. While Lily was in the pilot’s chair, Vincent and Lila sat at her back, each of them controlling one of the Remora’s mounted lascannons.   
  
There was a strange disconnect between the battle and Strike Two’s interior. The lascannon controls were touch-based, and surprisingly simple: pan the view by swiping a finger, and fire with a tap. That, combined with the exterior cameras projecting the view of the battle across the interior of the skimmer’s hull, made it so one could almost pretend this was just another attraction at a Trance City VRcade. Like this whole battle was just a thrilling simulation, or a dream.   
  
“This is so weird,” Lila mused, tapping away at her lascannon controls. “It doesn’t feel like we’re fighting for the fate of a planet. With these controls, I might as well be playing a game on holocomm.”  
  
“That’s by design,” Vincent said. “No need to overcomplicate the UI.”  
  
“It still feels wrong,” Lila pressed. “It shouldn’t be this easy to end a life. There should be a… weight to it. A gravity. Not just a push of a button, or a tap on a touch screen. What if those were people out there?”  
  
Vincent grinned. “Well, lucky for us, they’re not people. They’re monsters.”  
  
Lila blew out a sigh. “...Yeah. Lucky us…”  
  
Lily glanced back at Lila over her shoulder, but said nothing. On her console, the skimmer’s comm blinked with an incoming call. She flicked on the speaker.   
  
“Go ahead, Sparrow.”  
  
 _“Hey strike teams. Everybody still in one piece out there?”_ Robyn called.   
  
_“We’re here,”_ Crane reported.  
  
 _“I’m here!”_ Yuna chirped.  
  
“We’re here,” Lily said. “We’re doing okay.”  
  
“Pfft, we’re doing more than okay,” Vincent boasted. “We’re making this look easy!”  
  
Lila punched him in the arm. “Jesus Christ, Vince, don’t jinx it!”  
  
 _“That’s good to hear,”_ Robyn said. _“I mean, I had faith in y’all. But Ambrosia here was starting to get worried.”_  
  
 _“I was!”_ Ambrosia chimed in. _“In fairness, I’ve also been having difficulty coping with the Captain’s fancy flying, so I thought hearing from all of you might help to settle my stomach…”_ _  
_ _  
_A sudden blurt of interference gutted the transmission and sent white noise flickering across the exterior feeds. Out of the sea of static, a voice could just barely be picked out: Soren’s, aboard his command cruiser Basilisk.  
  
 _“… signs… major…-station…”_  
  
The transmission faded into a garbled mess.   
  
“Say again, Basilisk?” Lily called, tapping at her console. A moment later, a voice sounded directly in her head-- distant, but clear.   
  
_This is Basilisk to all allied signs. We have detected a major manifestation. All signs, prepare to regroup and enter defensive positions--_  
  
“Hey! What _is_ that?” Lila cried in alarm.   
  
Lily saw it. A sinister winged figure, trailing black smoke…  
  
The figure shot into them with inhuman speed and a wailing metallic crunch. Lily grabbed the controls and heaved, trying to pull the Remora out of its tailspin, as they plunged through the air, trailing smoke and scrap metal. Alarms blared across her console. Lily heard Crane’s voice in her head.   
  
_Lily! What’s going on?_ _  
_ _  
_“We’re hit!” Lily cried, fighting her controls. “We’re going down!”  
  
~*~  
  
The door flew open with a bang. A Malefic trooper looked up, startled, from the bodies he was searching. He dropped a handful of credits with a clatter while a daemon-beast snarled and leapt at the door.   
  
Kit stabbed the beast and impaled it to the door, raised her pistol and fired. The looter, still fumbling for his rifle, crumpled to the floor. The daemon-wolf, impaled on Kit’s blade, continued to yap and snarl in defiance. Kit shot it in the mouth and dropped its twitching corpse on the floor.   
  
Aabha trailed behind as Kit prowled ahead, clearing out the building room by room. The tempo of the battle had changed, from the bombastic sprint to the front door to the tense silence, punctuated by sharp, quick bouts of violence and sound.   
  
Malefic troopers, packs of daemon-wolves sniffing out salvage and picking the place clean, isolated ghouls cut off from the main force, all that was to be expected. But what was bothering Aabha was what they _weren’t_ finding.   
  
Survivors. They’d swept three floors already, and they hadn’t found a single survivor.  
  
Aabha blew out a troubled sigh. Mirai, beside her, raised an eyebrow.   
  
“Are you well, Agent Puri?” Mirai asked, with surprising tenderness.   
  
Aabha hesitated, glancing ahead. Up the hall, Kit dispatched two more Malefic troopers with a swipe of her sword. Unlike Aabha’s creeping anxiety, Kit seemed to be having the time of her life.  
  
“...It’s nothing,” Aabha muttered. She caught Mirai’s eyes. “Are you?”  
  
“There’s no need for concern. The Valkyries know no fear,” Mirai said proudly, and a little stiffly. She cleared her throat, her expression softening. “...But then, I suppose we are, both of us, out of our element.”  
  
“Yes,” Aabha nodded. “We’re both young, and new to our commands. But when push came to shove, I still had a way out. Someone to take over because the stakes were too high. But you… you have to shoulder this responsibility alone.”  
  
“Not alone,” Mirai said quietly.   
  
“I can’t say I envy you,” Aabha admitted. “That must be a terrible burden.”  
  
“It doesn’t come naturally to me, I admit,” Mirai said. “I’m a warrior at heart. All the Valkyries are. Killing monsters is a simple thing. A glorious thing. Any one of us can dive into a fray and make a fine showing of ourselves. But not every victory can be bought with our sweat alone. Some victories will demand our blood. And it is those decisions-- balancing the cruel numbers of war-- that give me pause.”  
  
Mirai took a deep breath and sighed. Her eyes were distant, clouded.   
  
“Could you do it, Agent Puri? Could you sacrifice one life to save many?”  
  
“I… I don’t know,” Aabha said. “Could _you_?”  
  
Mirai pursed her lips. “...I suppose it would depend.”  
  
“On?”  
  
“On who was the one.”  
  
They continued on in relative quiet, sporadic lasfire blasting in the distance. But then Aabha felt it again, in astral space: something warm, something familiar…  
  
Aabha stopped. The corridors up to now had been choked with filth, but now there were bodies blocking the way. She stepped gingerly over the crumpled troopers lining the hall, examining their wounds. Neat, efficient cuts, the ragged edges of fabric around the wounds instead scorched and strangely clean-- the telltale signs of an energized blade. But there was still that familiar feeling in the air, a lingering magical signature. It felt like--  
  
 _Lightning._   
  
“Aabha!”   
  
Kit’s urgent voice rang from a room up the hall and Aabha went running. She found Kit in a ruined classroom, her coat swaying in a breeze from broken windows. A dead minotaur lay face down in the threshold, and the doorframe was scorched not with lasfire, but with phasic bolts.   
  
And then there it was, left swaying on a coat hook and abandoned in haste: a robe the color of the night sky, covered not in constellations, but with spell patterns.   
  
Aabha clutched the fabric between her fingers, feeling its magic resonating with her own, as if embracing an old friend. She breathed it in, savoring the sensation, before her eyes met Kit’s and they exchanged nods.   
  
“What is it?” Mirai called from the hallway. “What have you found?”  
  
Aabha took a deep breath, and clutched the starry robe tight in her hand.   
  
“A survivor.”  
  
~*~  
  
Shapes. Shadows.   
  
Lily pushed herself up onto one elbow, clutching at her throbbing head. She reached out, blind, and flipped a switch on her console. The Remora’s armored hull slid open, and Lily fell, sideways, into the dirt.   
  
For a long moment, Lily simply laid there, an arm across her eyes. She heard klaxons blaring, saw lights and colors streak across her vision. Her head was spinning. Her whole body was aching. Can’t focus. Can’t remember. They were hit. Falling. Pain. Lila.   
  
Lily gasped, the thought of Lila cutting through her delirium.   
  
“Li-” she began, and choked on smoke. She tried again, her voice hoarse. “Lila, are you okay?”  
  
“I’m here,” Lila called out weakly beside her. Lily reached out and found Lila’s arm, squeezed it with as much strength she could muster.   
  
After a few moments of metallic clicking as Vincent fought with his buckles, Vincent finally unhooked his harness and fell sideways out of the Remora and into the dirt with an irritated grunt.   
  
“...Vince is here, too,” Lila said helpfully. Vincent merely groaned in response.   
  
It took the trio a long moment to drag themselves to their feet. Fortunately, or unfortunately, their Remora was in worse condition than they were. They had crashed at an angle, carving a deep furrow into the soil as they ground to a stop, and the skimmer was now tilted on its side, exposing its undercarriage and the deep, jagged gash that nearly cut the anti-gravity ring in two.  
  
“How bad is it?” Lily called.   
  
Vincent studied the Remora’s exposed chassis, one arm across his chest, a gloved hand tapping his chin. He shook his head and blew out a sigh.   
  
“It won’t be pretty, but it’s patchable,” Vincent said. “We probably shouldn’t try atmospheric mode with a patched drive ring, but we should be able to manage ground skimming, at least.”  
  
“I’ll take that over being stuck on foot,” Lily said. “Do you have what you need to make the repairs?”  
  
“Shit, man, I don’t know,” Vincent groaned. “I ain’t the Chief. I’m just the guy who gets to polish her wrenches. If I had the Chief here, we’d probably be flying already.”  
  
Lila dropped down beside him. She held up a toolbox with both hands.  
  
“How about if you had a field kit and a friend?”  
  
Vincent managed a grin. “Alright, well. In that case, just give me twenty minutes.”  
  
“This is sweet and all,” Lily began, “but what if I couldn’t give you twenty minutes?”  
  
“What makes you say that?” Vincent wondered.   
  
A strong wind passed over the crash site and made Vincent take a step back, his collar flapping in the gust. In the distance, thick banks of roiling dust clouds were sweeping over the horizon and surging across the plains like a tidal wave. They were an ugly, mottled brown, lit from within by flashes of hellish red light, and they carried with them the dry, dusty scent of bones baking in the desert heat, wind whistling through empty eyes.   
  
Except there _were_ eyes in the growing dust cloud, and they shone through the fog with unearthly violet light.   
  
“...No reason,” Lily muttered, rueful, as the sandstorm, omen of Decay, began bearing down on them. She clapped Vincent and Lila on the shoulders, climbed up onto the upended Remora, and swiveled the multilaser turret around to aim into the storm, engaging manual fire with a metallic clunk.   
  
Lily glanced down at the duo below her, anxiously watching the approaching sandstorm.   
  
“Get to work,” she called. “I’ve got you.”  
  
~*~  
  
“Brother Taven!”  
  
Taven jolted upright, startled, as Aabha hurried downstairs, Mirai and Kit at her heels. His personal guard detail of six Sisters were like statues beside him, not so much as moving a muscle or straying an inch from their posts.   
  
“Agent Puri, thank goodness,” Taven breathed. “Four floors and the sweep hasn’t yet turned up a single survivor. Please, tell me you have something.”  
  
“I do,” Aabha said. She pressed a bundle of cloth into Taven’s hands.   
  
“This robe belonged to my mentor, Senior Agent Morgan Telerian,” Aabha explained. “His magical signature is everywhere in this campus. He was here, defending this building, but he must have been forced to retreat. Can you use this to scry for him? Can you find out where he went? Can you tell me he’s still alive?”  
  
Even at the slightest touch, Taven could feel the spark of magic within the cloth. He spread the robe flat across a nearby tabletop, the stars glimmering in the campus’ pale light.   
  
“I’ll do what I can,” Taven murmured, thoughtful. “I’ll need a focus, someone who knew the target more intimately than I-- Agent Puri, you’ll do nicely-- and… an anchor.”  
  
Mirai appeared beside Taven without a word. He nodded.   
  
“...Let us begin.”  
  
Taven took a deep breath. He stood beneath a half-broken light fixture, cast in the pale light like a shaft of moonlight. The light pulsed around him, dimming and brightening as if it were breathing, alive. Wisps of white light glittered like motes of dust caught in a sunbeam, drifting around his hair, settling in his robe, gathering at his fingertips.   
  
Taven spread an open palm over Morgan’s starry robe. The lights pulsed--  
  
 _Shapes. Shadows. Three lights in the dark. Three lights, racing through a shadowed wilderness. One, young, unformed, a wisp of gray cloud. Another, older, solid, stable, her power pooling in her feet like the roots of a great tree. The third, buzzing with anticipation. Always with a plan. A spell for every occasion._ _  
_ _  
_ _Lightning affinity. A man after his own heart._ _  
_ _  
_ _In astral space, the light of life shines like a star. Despite the spectacular battle raging across the skies above, the brilliant lights of lasfire and plasma discharge mean nothing to enlightened minds. They follow a different call, a river of power trailing north, to a magnificent soul-- shining like a bonfire in the heart of the campus. A tree made of light, shining violet and carved from frozen lightning._ _  
_ _  
_ _A shadow. A darkness, slithering up his spine-- but a darkness still firmly on his side. He feels the Spymaster’s forked tongue against his ear._ _  
_ _  
_ ** _Danger_** _, he hisses._ ** _Danger--_**  
  
Taven returned to himself with a shudder, his eyes glinting with starlight. He clapped his hands down on the tabletop, breathing heavily, staring into the distance.   
  
“Taven,” Mirai was calling. “Taven!”  
  
Mirai slapped him. Taven snapped awake with a gasp, briefly clasping Mirai’s hand.   
  
“Ah-- thank you, Mirai,” Taven said. He groaned, rubbing at his eyes. The vision swam behind his eyelids.   
  
“What did you see?” Aabha wondered.   
  
“He is here,” Taven breathed, grave.   
  
“Who? Morgan?” Kit asked, trying not to get her hopes up.   
  
“No,” Taven shuddered, looking up. “The Sandstorm is _here_ …”  
  
The skies darkened. The roiling dust cloud smashed into the campus like a tidal wave, the howling wind sweeping down every hall like the sighs of the dead. What pale light remained within the campus took on a sinister, shadowed cast, and the heavy, oppressive aura of toxic magic filled the air…  
  
“Brace! Brace!” Mirai bellowed.   
  
The squad drew in tight, their shields locking together in formation. The ensorcelled wind swept over them, dark magic lingering on their edge of their senses. But this deathly wind had no business with the living.  
  
At the end of the hallway, a Malefic trooper, still bleeding from a trio of gunshots to its chest, dragged itself to its feet. It tore its helmet away and shrieked a horrid, banshee wail, before sprinting down the hall, crimson fire in its eyes, black smoke trailing from its limbs. It curled its legs beneath itself and pounced.  
  
Kit caught the trooper on her twin blades and wrestled it to the ground, snapping and biting. Kit left a glowing gouge down the trooper’s torso from shoulder to hip-- but it didn’t die. Kit grimaced, stomped a boot down on the trooper’s ribs and kept hacking until the unearthly light left its eyes.   
  
“Oh, _this_ is going to be a pain…” Kit rolled her eyes.  
  
There was another shriek, this one closer, much closer. One of the poor Agents who’d barricaded herself in the student center leapt from the scrum of bodies, false stars shining in her eyes. She swung for Kit’s face, her nails transformed into claws--  
  
Kit parried her strikes with her white-hot blades, mangling the girl’s fingers. Over her shoulder, Aabha flicked her wrist, and a burning chakram sliced open the girl’s hamstrings, dropping her to her knees. The girl clung stubbornly to Kit’s blades in an attempt to stay upright, even as her skin began to scorch and sizzle.   
  
Kit screwed up her face in disgust, and beheaded the girl with one clean stroke.   
  
But the foul wind swept through the halls yet again, and the girl’s torso dragged itself up, her head shrieking and answering the Sandstorm’s call…  
  
Taven speared the girl’s severed head with the haft of his staff, annihilating it in a flash of white. Then he speared the girl’s body, and twisted, white fire engulfing the ruined corpse and burning it to ash.   
  
“The Aspect of Decay,” Taven said, through gritted teeth. “Nothing goes to waste in the forces of Malice, not even our dead. Decay will bring them back, and they will fight, and drag more of us into their ranks. We’ll kill them, again and again, until there’s nothing left to return… until the last battlefield lies empty, and sand swallows all.”  
  
A tremor shook the building, sending dust cascading down from the rafters. Shadows moved in the distance-- a tidal wave of resurgent ghouls, clawing and scraping at the walls, the windows. Glass shattered down the hall and ghouls began surging in, scrambling over each other on their hands and knees, shrieking, snapping, biting. Again, a chorus of shrieks rang out through the building, each ghoul lifting its fanged maw and adding its voice to the rising chorus…  
  
“Turtle down! Shields up!” Mirai ordered, and the Sisters drew in tight around Taven, Aabha, and Kit, their shields and spears forming a ring around the group.   
  
The first lurching wave of undead bolted down the corridor. The foremost ranks were slashed apart in a cascade of searing lance beams, only for the following ranks to smash against the shield wall. Aabha’s chakrams flew over the heads of the phalanx, trailing fire and entrails. Kit’s pistol flashed in the gloom, her sword firing gouts of flame into the crowd.   
  
“All signs!” Mirai cried over the chaotic melee. “Abandon your sweep and rally to me! Rejoin the shield formation! Regroup! Regroup!”  
  
~*~  
  
“Ma’am! Two more stragglers from the Cygnus campus!”  
  
The venerable sorceress turned, her flowing violet gown dusting the courtyard steps. The disheveled pair before her were hardly in their Sunday best-- one in scuffed, battleworn forest-green armor, the other in a ragged, midnight-blue robe.   
  
“Seniors Telerian,” she intoned.   
  
“Archmagus Kalani,” they said, reverent, both on one knee.   
  
She urged them to their feet, beringed fingers resting on their shoulders.   
  
“You were the last ones out of the Cygnus campus? Were there any other survivors?”  
  
“Just one,” Morgan said, stepping aside. Serafine Crespo waved, awkward.  
  
Kalani shook her head, mournful. “...Thank you for your service, Agents. You should join the others in the student center. There are barricades that need building.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
Morgan and Syl hurried off to their duties, tugging Serafine along by the arm. Kalani lingered in the courtyard, gazing up at the false sun of the Breach, high in the sky, and the calamitous aerial battle streaking across the crowds. Drop pods and landing ships continued spilling out of the sky like rain.   
  
Kalani took a deep breath, and sighed.   
  
“No word from the Watchtower Council, or at least, no word that can penetrate this interference,” Kalani murmured. “A fleet on my doorstep, an army falling like rain… and yet, no power clashing in the skies over Providence can compare to that which lives and breathes beneath my feet.”  
  
Ribbons of violet light trailed behind Kalani like a bridal train, rings of power spinning into existence at her footsteps. An earthly aurora shone around her, a gargantuan magical sigil shining in the air around her.   
  
“Bear witness, defilers,” Kalani intoned.   
  
She opened her arms, palms up, as storm clouds roiled high above.   
  
“Bear witness,” Kalani said, eyes blazing with light, “as the land itself rises against you…”  
  
~*~  
  
A Sister cried out, overwhelmed, and disappeared, flailing into the crowd.   
  
“Plug that hole!” Mirai bellowed, and another Sister stepped forward, raising her shield to fill the gap. The team hosed lasfire and lance beams in every direction, and was swarmed by ghouls on all sides-- but the formation was holding, if only just.   
  
“Mirai!” Taven called, firing bolts of white lightning from the headpiece of his staff. “Mirai, we won’t hold them in close quarters like this!”  
  
“He’s right!” Aabha called, chakrams flying from her hands. “We’re pinned down!”  
  
“Nonsense! Nothing pins down the Valkyries!” Mirai brought her fingers to her mouth and whistled. “Break formation! To the roof! Break! Break!”  
  
As one, the Sisters spread their wings and broke out of their phalanx, taking flight. They smashed through the ceiling and the crumbling upper floors, bursting out into the open air. But while the sky was clearer than the claustrophobic halls choked with ghouls, the sandstorm had still engulfed the campus. There were shadows in the clouds, plumes of black smoke…  
  
“Rally to me! To me!” Mirai cried, rising on a plume of white and gold from the ruined building.   
  
Mirai cried out. Something slammed into her from the side and smashed her onto the roof. She rolled to a stop and pushed herself up onto her elbows, a crack down the center of her chestplate.   
  
Above her was a man in rags, lean and pale as death, a black-bladed spear in his hands. He leered down at her with a permanent grin splitting his face from ear to ear, a sadistic giggle spilling out of his lips.   
  
“What fun,” laughed Jei, the Dark Apostle. “What fun, _what_ ** _fun_** …!”  
  
“Captain…!”  
  
A Sister leapt to Mirai’s defense. She died immediately, a spear through her throat, while Jei watched her choke and laughed and laughed.   
  
Fury galvanized Mirai out of her stupor. She leapt to her feet-- but Jei leveraged the Sister off his blade and flung her into Mirai’s arms. He shot at her, a blur of black smoke, laughing that hyena laugh as his blade flashed in his hands…  
  
Mirai cried out, parrying a dozen blows in an instant, Jei’s superhuman speed smashing the spear from her grip. As Jei cackled in delight and prepared to run her through, a bolt of white lightning exploded in his face.   
  
Taven was beside her, palm out, fingers crackling. Jei was upon him in an instant, materializing out of black smoke, his spear flashing down. Jei’s spear punched into a conjured barrier of golden light, crunching through like ground glass. Jei braced one foot on the barrier and yanked his spear free, Taven’s barrier crumpling under his assault.   
  
Jei ducked an instant before Aabha’s chakrams could take his head off, the twin ring blades shearing a lock of his greasy hair and sending tufts of black feathers drifting down. He hurled his spear, Aabha deflecting it over her shoulder-- only for Jei to appear around the haft of his spear and stab Aabha from behind. Aabha curled into the blow, the blade deflecting across the halo on the back of her armor in a shower of golden sparks. Aabha jabbed an elbow into the daemon lord’s throat, and sliced his chest open with a scissoring cut of her chakrams.  
  
Jei hissed in dismay, and plunged his clawed fingers into Aabha’s collar. He hurled her over the edge of the roof--  
  
Aabha summoned her armor’s wings and stopped herself short. Ahead, Jei was retrieving his spear.  
  
Kit sent his spear skittering across the roof with a gust of wind. Beside her, Mirai bellowed out a war cry and lunged forward. Jei caught her spear by its forked blade, saw the plasma beam charging between the tines…  
  
Jei threw his head back, the lance beam missing his face by inches. He somersaulted away, conjuring his spear back into his grip with a wisp of black smoke, studying the opponents arrayed against him-- Aabha in particular.   
  
“Curious,” he whispered, the grin never leaving his face.   
  
Jei laughed, and raised his black bladed spear. He beat his wings, shooting forward like a bullet--  
  
A huge pillar of crackling violet energy exploded over the horizon, rising from the ground and stabbing into the sky. An expanding shockwave of violet lightning shot across the clouds, blasting the mission team off their feet.   
  
Jei stopped in his tracks, momentarily entranced. Then, a huge bolt of violet lightning smashed him out of the sky in a crumpled ruin of black smoke.   
  
Jei snarled, surging with electricity. He snatched his spear out of the air and limped away.   
  
“After him!” Mirai roared.   
  
“No! Wait!” Aabha gasped. “That’s an Aspect of Malice! He’ll kill you!”  
  
“The Valkyries know no fear! Stop him! _Stop him!_ ”  
  
“Mirai!”  
  
Mirai flinched. She saw Taven beside her, felt his hand on her shoulder. She took a deep breath.   
  
“We’ve taken casualties,” Taven said, meeting her eyes. “Our VIP isn’t here. We need to regroup.”  
  
Mirai sighed, and shook her head.   
  
“What are we?” Taven urged.   
  
“We are the Valkyries,” Mirai recited. “...The Valkyries choose the living and the dead.”  
  
Mirai pounded her spear against the ground.   
  
“All signs, report! Report and fall in!”  
  
While Order asset Talon bustled behind them, and the floors below continued to fill with ghouls, Aabha and Kit gazed out at the great pillar of violet lightning rising in the distance, the eye of an enormous arcane storm. They watched as hundreds of ships plummeted from the air, wreathed in violet lightning, friend and foe alike.   
  
Such tremendous power, to stop an invasion in its tracks. But the cost. There was always a cost.  
  
The Order’s comm networks, if they weren’t overloaded with interference before, they were completely gone now. Still, Aabha kept trying, anxiety thrumming in her heart…  
  
“Lily?” Aabha called out, into empty air. “Crane? Come in, anyone. Captain? Sparrow, can you hear me? Is there anyone out there?”  
  
~*~


	3. Ground Zero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the sky falls, and all hell breaks loose.

~*~   
  
It happened so fast.    
  
First, the sandstorm rolled in, the herald of Decay, smothering the ferocious aerial battle over Providence with a thick cloud of rust-red dust. And Robyn thought, no problem, I’ll just switch my cyber-eyes over to thermal imaging and we should be fine.    
  
And it was fine, for a little while. Robyn’s cybernetic eyes cut through the gloom and illuminated the skies around her, resolving the chaotic melee of ships surrounding her into the bright points of sublight engines, shining like stars in the night sky rather than mere shadows in the sand.    
  
Then lightning struck. Not a single bolt, searing across her eyelids in a split second. But thousands of them, all at once, like a great tree of blazing violet light-- a pillar of arcane power, sturdy at the base, its peak exploding outwards like groping branches stabbing into the sky.    
  
Robyn cried out in pain, her cyber-eyes briefly overloaded by the intense blaze of light and heat, the flash of the arcane storm burning itself into her eyes and leaving ghosts flickering against her eyelids.    
  
A shockwave of arcane power shot across the battlefield, trailing arcs of sizzling violet lightning. From one moment to the next, the entire swarm of landing craft and their escorts above Providence, friend and foe alike, fell out of the sky.    
  
The Sparrow shivered and convulsed, magicked lightning coursing across its hull. It plunged into a nosedive, static washing over Robyn’s console, alarms wailing.    
  
“What happened?” Ambrosia cried over the din. “What’s going on?”   
  
“Seat belts, ladybug!” Robyn yelled. “This is gonna be a rough one!”   
  
Robyn’s fingers flew across her console, yanking back on her controls, fighting to get the Sparrow’s systems back online after being gutted by the otherworldly EMP. Ambrosia shrieked in alarm as another falling craft smashed against the Sparrow’s nose and slammed them into a spin. Robyn fought to level them out, and eventually succeeded-- only to find Providence’s plains rushing up to meet them.    
  
“Captain!” Ambrosia yelled, throwing off her flight harness.    
  
“What did I just say about seat belts?!” Robyn snapped.    
  
“Captain, grab on!” Ambrosia urged, frantic.    
  
They were seconds away from impact. There was no time to argue. Robyn swore, scrambling out of her seat. She felt Ambrosia’s arms curl around her waist just as she drew her pistols, flicked their charge settings to maximum, and fired.    
  
Robyn and Ambrosia burst through the pilot’s canopy, Ambrosia’s wings buzzing at her back.    
  
An instant later, the Sparrow crashed down. The cloud of shrapnel and debris shredded Ambrosia’s wings. They hit the ground, tumbling, Robyn instinctively pulling Ambrosia beneath her and shielding her with her body even though, rationally, any piece of raining debris could just as easily crush them both.    
  
A Malefic drop pod crashed down beside them like an artillery shell, the impact throwing them both off their feet. Robyn swore and scrambled upright, pulling Ambrosia along. They took cover under one of the Sparrow’s wings, jutting out of the ground like the awning in front of a storefront. All around them, ships were raining from the sky and smashing into the ground like a nightmarish hail, some of them erupting into blooming fireballs when ammunition stockpiles cooked off or damaged drive cores detonated.    
  
Robyn and Ambrosia knelt under the Sparrow’s wing, listening to the devastation unfold around them. They flinched as a falling ship smashed into the Sparrow from above. The craft slid across the Sparrow’s hull with a tortured metal squeal, tumbling into the dirt.    
  
Ambrosia was on her hands and knees, panting, her ruined wings hanging from her back like a cape of twitching tulle.    
  
“Hey,” Robyn murmured. “Hey, ladybug. You okay?”   
  
Ambrosia drew a ragged breath. She reached up, wiping at her eyes. Her tears were thicker, more viscous than a human’s, sticky like tree sap.    
  
“I’m sorry, I just… I’ve… I’ve never…” Ambrosia shook her head. She took a shuddering breath, and managed a smile. “...Never mind me. What about you? The Sparrow is your ship. Your home.”   
  
Robyn glanced up at the metal hulk above them, groaning as more falling debris smacked against its armored hull. Even now, the Sparrow was a roof over their heads.    
  
“...I’ll send the Order the repair bill,” Robyn said wryly.    
  
Her grin only lasted a moment. She took Ambrosia’s shoulder with a squeeze.    
  
“...Thanks for getting us out,” Robyn murmured, somber.    
  
“Of course,” Ambrosia nodded.    
  
“Your wings…”   
  
“It’s okay,” Ambrosia said softly. She reached up and closed her hand over Robyn’s on her shoulder. “I’ll be okay. They’ll grow back!”   
  
Robyn chuckled and shook her head fondly. “...Supers…”   
  
A shrieking crash above them startled the duo from their reverie. The Sparrow creaked and groaned, listing dangerously to one side.    
  
“Aw, shit,” Robyn hissed, scrambling to her feet. “Come on, come on!”   
  
Robyn hoisted Ambrosia upright and ran before the Sparrow’s shifting bulk could crush them. They darted out from under the Sparrow’s tilting wing, only to see the wrecked starfighter that had crashed onto it, tipping over the edge. Metal groaned and crunched, the debris giving way.   
  
Robyn skidded to a halt, but Ambrosia kept going. She snatched her wrist, yanked her back-- too slow, too slow…   
  
There was a thundering roar that wasn’t the explosion of a ship crashing to the ground-- it was an actual roar, one that sent a blast of frigid air cascading across the ruined fighter and shoving it aside. Robyn yanked Ambrosia back, once against instinctively shielding the other woman in her embrace. The fighter crunched onto the ground, spraying the duo with chipped ice. It began tipping toward them, but then two powerful arms wrapped around it.    
  
Yuna hurled the frozen wreckage over her shoulder. She transformed in a bloom of pale blue light, but her magic flickered and faltered, only shifting her halfway, keeping her tail and her wings.    
  
“Are you two alright?” Yuna asked.    
  
She scarcely had time to get the words out before Robyn dove into her arms. Yuna sank into the embrace, sighing in relief, her chin resting atop Robyn’s head. But then she lifted her gaze and gasped, a hand over her mouth.    
  
“...The Sparrow…” she murmured, aghast.    
  
“Don’t worry. We’re insured,” Robyn flashed her a reassuring grin. “...Might be a hell of a line at the claims office, though.”   
  
Yuna smiled, despite everything. She pulled Robyn into a soft, sweet kiss, before Robyn graciously stepped back. Ambrosia was standing behind her, her hands folded in front of her like a praying mantis, timidly waiting her turn for a hug.    
  
Yuna was all too happy to oblige, pulling Ambrosia into a tight embrace. She cooed into the embrace, Ambrosia laying her head on her chest, before her eyes widened in concern at Ambrosia’s torn, twitching wings.    
  
“Your wings…” Yuna gasped.    
  
“It’s okay. It’s okay! They’ll grow back,” Ambrosia cooed. She nodded to Yuna’s own wings, ragged and frayed from flying through a sandstorm, covered in black, sooty halos where lasfire had punched through. “And look! At least now, we match.”   
  
Yuna giggled, and pressed her forehead to hers.    
  
“I’m glad you can still stay positive at a time like this,” Yuna said, smiling.    
  
“ _ Someone _ has to, right?” Ambrosia tittered.    
  
“Has there been any word from the others?” Yuna asked.    
  
“No. Nothing,” Robyn sighed. “I thought comms were getting bad when the sandstorm started rolling in, but after that storm, whatever that was? No one’s getting anything through. Well, maybe if you were a mind reader, like Crane.”   
  
“Agent Crane is a smart woman. Her team can handle themselves,” Ambrosia urged.    
  
“Yeah,” Yuna blew out a sigh, her smile fading. “I just hope the kids are alright.”   
  
~*~   
  
“Guys! You doing okay?” Lily cried over the droning of heavy lasfire.   
  
“Oh, yeah, we’re doing  _ great _ !” Vincent shot back, his voice wavering with nerves. He adjusted the wiring on the Remora’s undercarriage, yanking his fingers back with a yelp as sparks flew. “Hotwiring a skimmer with a busted repulsor ring and lasers flying over my head, I’m having a goddamn blast!”   
  
“Relax,” Lila said, her gentle tone undercut by the frenetic stream of lasfire pouring out from Lily’s multilaser turret above them. “Just focus on getting us back on our feet. Lily will keep us safe.”   
  
“Oh yeah?” Vincent wondered. “What will you be doing?”   
  
“I’m here for, well, you know,” Lila smiled, sheepish. “Morale.”   
  
An inhuman shriek cut through the air, soon answered by a dozen other snarling voices. Lila looked up, caught glimpses of shadows moving through the sandstorm’s ruddy glow. Lila gasped as something lunged out of the storm, catching the derringer that fell out of her sleeve and snapping up her aim-- before a long burst from Lily’s multilaser turret scythed down a pack of feral ghouls like so much wheat.    
  
“Vince, how long is this gonna take?” Lily called, her voice stained with worry.    
  
“It’ll take longer if you keep stressing me out!” Vincent called back.    
  
“Calm down!” Lila cut in, though the tremor in her voice suggested she didn’t have that much calm to spare. “Listen, Vincent. Concentrate on what you’re doing. You’ve got two badasses watching your back.”   
  
Vincent snorted. “You’re a badass now?”   
  
Lila rolled her eyes. “Lily’s one and a half. The point is, let  _ us _ worry about the shooting. What you’re doing is way more important. No pressure or anything.”   
  
“Oh, yeah, no pressure!” Vincent scoffed.    
  
Another pack leapt from the shadows, their jaws snapping. Lily stitched the air with lasfire, mauling the horde with her barrage. They crumpled, shrieking in pain and fury.    
  
Something thudded at Lila’s feet. A ghoul, sawn in half at the waist by sheer volume of incoming fire-- but it did not die. It clawed its way forward, its wounds weeping smoke and treacly black blood, its eyes shining with an uncanny violet light. Some unholy power suffused this severed torso, letting it steal just a few more moments of unlife. It spent those moments groping for one last victim, claws outstretched, hissing its defiance.    
  
Lila shot it in the face with her derringer and didn’t stop until it was finally still.    
  
“Ew ew ew!” Lila squealed, dancing on her heels like she’d just been startled by a cockroach rather than emptying a revolver into a lesser daemon’s skull.    
  
“You okay, Lila?” Lily called out.    
  
“I’m fine!” Lila replied, fishing a speed-loader from her vest pocket. “It’s just… ugh, you never told me how  _ gross _ they would sound when you shot them.”   
  
Vincent laughed, despite everything. “Yeah, you’ll get used to that…”   
  
Lily chuckled, but her smile didn’t last long. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the display for the mutilaser’s power cell starting to dip dangerously low. Normally, it would be drawing its charge from the skimmer’s gravitic drive, but with the skimmer grounded...   
  
“Lily?” Lila asked, her voice piercing the fog of Lily’s thoughts.    
  
Lily glanced up. “What? Yes.”   
  
“Are  _ you _ okay?” Lila urged.    
  
Lily blew out a sigh, shaking her head. “I’ll be fine. Just… thinking.”   
  
“Hey. Look at me,” Lila cooed, meeting Lily’s eyes. “They’re going to be okay.”   
  
When Lila looked at her like that, and said it with such pure, sweet conviction, Lily could just about believe it. She blew her anxiety away with a huff, finally managing a smile.    
  
“...Thanks,” Lily murmured. Lila beamed.    
  
“They’re gonna be  _ more _ than okay,” Vincent chimed in. “They’re flying with the Valkyries, the Order Elite. How bad could things possibly be?”   
  
~*~   
  
_ “Brace!” _ Mirai bellowed.    
  
As one, the Sisters of Order asset Talon raised their shields and stamped their spears on the ground like the pounding of a gavel. Light bloomed above their shields, a force field projected beyond the molded ceramite, forming hexagonal panes of thrumming golden energy. The Sisters’ projected barriers locked together as one, supported by pillars of energy projected from their spears.    
  
A Malefic frigate, wreathed in crackling violet lightning, fell out of the sky and smashed into the Sister’s phalanx with a shrieking crash. Aabha flinched, watching as the ship’s ruined hulk bounced off the dome of golden light, some smaller pieces outright disintegrating upon contact with the sizzling force field. The deflected debris crashed down around them, hurling up a cloud of smoke to rival the unnatural sandstorm. Then again, it wasn’t like the visibility could get much worse.    
  
“Recover!” Mirai called, and the Sisters lowered their shields, the golden dome around them winking out of existence, one hexagonal pane at a time. Aabha and Kit, lacking shields, warily poked their heads out from where they were huddled against Mirai in the heart of the formation.    
  
In the distance, a vast pillar of violet lightning bridged the gap between the horizon and the sky. All around them, crippled spacecraft, friend and foe alike, were falling from the clouds, all of them wreathed in shivering arcane power.    
  
“What was that…?” Kit wondered, squinting towards the source of the pillar. Bolts of lightning periodically lashed out of the column, swatting stray ships from the air with cracks of thunder. “Some kind of superweapon?”   
  
“No,” Aabha breathed, her senses buzzing. “The air is flooded with magic. That was a spell.”   
  
“It was a hell of a light show, whatever it was,” Kit muttered.    
  
“I would sooner concern myself with the stranger that attacked us,” Mirai glowered. “The man with the black-bladed spear.”   
  
The pale man’s shadowed eyes and cruel smile flashed across Aabha’s eyelids. She blew out a sigh.    
  
“Try the Sparrow again,” Aabha murmured to Kit, sidelong. “Lily, the captain, Agent Crane, anyone.”   
  
“Nothing,” Kit shook her head. “Nothing but static, all channels. Static and lightning.”   
  
“Damn it,” Aabha said quietly. Mirai fixed her with her hawklike stare.    
  
“Agent Puri,” Mirai said gravely. “What do you know about this?”   
  
Aabha blew out a weary sigh.    
  
“...We encountered a similar sandstorm on Calcian,” Aabha explained. “The distortion field is the signature of Seth, the Aspect of Decay, and would explain the hordes of ghouls. But I don’t know anything about some flying zealot with a black spear. And I don’t know anything or anyone that can summon a lightning storm like  _ that _ .”   
  
Mirai considered this, her lips pressed into a line and dipping ever so slightly into a frown. She shouldered past Aabha and Kit, her officers snapping to attention at her approach.    
  
“Second Spears Bryn, Sigrun,” Mirai said, nodding to them in turn. “Any word from Sister Zahra?”   
  
“No, ser,” Sigrun reported. “We’re blanked on all channels. And even if we could get through, God knows if the Talon’s still flying with that lightning storm in the air.”   
  
Mirai exhaled. She glanced aside. “Casualties?”   
  
“We’ve lost a quarter of our strength,” Bryn said quietly. “We may yet lose more. Brother Taven is tending the wounded now. He would like a word--”   
  
“I see him,” Mirai murmured, marching past. Aabha and Kit followed sullenly at her heels.    
  
An active warzone was no place for a proper convalescence, but Brother Taven made do. A trio of wounded Sisters were laid out upon their capes in a makeshift field hospital. One was unconscious from the pain. One murmured mantras under breath. The last was making hushed conversation with Taven, a hand clasped tightly in his. At Mirai’s approach, Taven gave her hand a squeeze before reluctantly rising from her side.    
  
“How long do you need?” Mirai asked, already confident it was a matter of when, not if, Taven could get them on their feet.    
  
“Longer than you might think,” Taven shook his head. “There’s something strange at work here. Some fell magic, resisting my efforts. My healing power is struggling to take hold.”   
  
Just like the man on Calcian, Aabha thought. Right before he became a ghoul.    
  
“Can you save them?” Aabha blurted out.    
  
“I don’t know,” Taven admitted quietly. “It will take time. Time we may not have. We’re too exposed. We can’t stay here.”   
  
“Your badges,” Kit offered. “Your badges are synced up to the fleet, right? Just ‘port back, get ‘em to a proper med bay.”   
  
“In this storm?” Sister Bryn wondered, dubious. “If the distortion field’s blanking comms, you’ll never get a teleport lock all the way from the Fleet.”   
  
“Short range, then,” Aabha suggested. “Squad to squad comms are doing a little better than fieldwide. There has to be someone nearby who can help.”   
  
“Leave us,” the wounded sister croaked.    
  
“No,” Mirai snapped. “Sigrun, Bryn.”   
  
The officers snapped to attention. “Yes, ser.”   
  
“Set a perimeter and reform the shield wall. Set a personal detail on Brother Taven and these three. Six spears at all times. We’re making a field hospital, right here, right now.”   
  
“Yes, ser!”   
  
Aabha and Kit looked up as the phalanx reformed around them, the golden dome of interlocking hexagonal force fields forming a shining roof over their heads. Aabha and Kit exchanged glances, eyes flitting from each other to Taven and Mirai and back again. Already, shadows were massing in the fog, the shining shield a beacon drawing the horde’s prying eyes.    
  
Aabha swore under her breath, falling to her knees at Taven’s side, the trio of wounded sprawled at her feet.   
  
“I can help,” she muttered, anxious. “Tell me what I can do.”   
  
“We’re really going to dig in our heels here, in the middle of this shitshow?” Kit wondered, drawing her swords.    
  
“The Valkyries are rare, and they are precious,” Mirai said, with a cold conviction. “I’ll not lose any more than I absolutely have to. Not while we have a chance to save them.”   
  
“Mirai,” Taven warned. “There’s a chance that us standing our ground here would have us lose more than we’d save.”   
  
“The Valkyries choose the living and the dead,” Mirai recited.    
  
She glanced at the ground, a shadow flicking across her eyes.    
  
“...Get to work.”   
  
~*~   
  
A hail of lasfire stitched across the plains and blasted apart another pack of ghouls. The multilaser cycled down, a “low power” warning flashing on one side of the display, an “overheat” alarm blaring from the other. Lily swore, ejecting the spent power cell with a hiss of steam.   
  
“Vince!” Lily called, more urgently, as she tossed the spent cell over her shoulder into the skimmer. “Vince, how are we looking?”   
  
“Almost there…” Vincent muttered, his brow furrowed in concentration. He sparked two wires together, listened for a moment, then swore in frustration when the drive failed to reignite. He smacked a hand against the skimmer’s chassis. “Come on! Work! Work!”   
  
There was a thunderous crash and a blaze of light on the horizon. Lila cried in alarm, her voice swallowed up by the deafening blast. And as the blinding flash faded not into a mushroom cloud, but a pillar of violet lightning, an energized shockwave shot across the plains.    
  
Vincent yelped and recoiled as wild arcs of violet lightning surged out of the skimmer’s exposed gravitic core and into his hands. Lila collided with him an instant later, hurling him aside as the force of the distant explosion shoved the skimmer out from where it was jutting out of the ground and smashed it flat onto its belly.    
  
Vincent landed in the dirt, his legs thankfully not crushed under an inert skimmer-- but his hands twitching with volatile arcane power.    
  
“Vince. Vince!” Lila cried, fumbling for her pack.   
  
“I’m fine…” Vincent muttered, dazed.    
  
“Oh, you’re ‘fine’, Mr. Tough Guy?” Lila scoffed.    
  
A shadow loomed behind her. Vincent reflexively pulled her behind him, his pistol snapping up to aim, unsteady in his shaking fingers. He fired, and missed, once, twice.   
  
A hard round shattered the ghoul’s jaw and snapped its head to the side. It turned, mindless hatred in its shining red eyes. Lila swallowed hard, clutching her derringer in both hands. The ghoul bared its claws, and Lila flinched, raising her pistol as it pounced--   
  
A shotgun blast threw the ghoul aside like a hook yanking it offstage. Lily hopped out from where she’d fallen into the skimmer, darted forward and pulled Lila into a hug. Lila sank into her arms gladly.    
  
“Are you okay?” Lily urged.    
  
“I’m fine, but Vince--”   
  
“What are you talking about?” Vincent winced, clutching his pistol with gnarled fingers. “I’m doing great.”   
  
“What was that?” Lila wondered.    
  
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. Look,” Lily pointed.    
  
The aerial battle over Providence was ended in an instant. Stricken craft were falling from the sky, charred and smoking and shivering with violet lightning. In the distance, there was an echoing boom as the first of these poor souls hit the ground. Then another, and another. In a few moments, the downpour of falling craft would become torrential.    
  
“We have to move,” Lily urged. “We have to get this skimmer moving. Vincent, where are we on this repair? Can you proceed?”   
  
“We’re closer than you think, but further than you’d hope,” Vincent muttered, wincing as Lily pulled a healing stim from a hip pouch and injected it into his arm. “The skimmer’s still in decent shape. If anything, that blast did us a favor, knocking it level like that. But the home stretch is a bit of a delicate operation. I’m gonna need Lila’s hands.”   
  
“There’s a joke in there, somewhere,” Lila teased. Vincent cracked a grin.    
  
“Save it,” Lily said. “Lila, help him. Vince, talk her through it.”   
  
“What will you be doing?” Lila asked, Lily bent over the edge of the skimmer, rifling through a storage hatch.    
  
In the distance, more stricken craft were falling out of the sky and crashing down to earth, throwing up huge geysers of dirt and debris, exploding into huge blooms of flame as their drive cores ignited and their fuel reserves cooked off. When Strike Two went down, they were lucky enough to have crash landed a decent way away from the bulk of the fighting-- but now those ships were crashing down on a horde of ghouls, sending the swarm scattering like rats right in their direction.    
  
Lily emerged from the skimmer with her shotgun slung over her shoulder, a laspistol on her hip, and a fresh power cell slapped into her cryo rifle, the prototype weapon powering up with a whine. She met Lila’s eyes and managed a smile.    
  
“...I’ll be busy,” Lily said with a wink, before turning and facing the fleeing horde head-on.   
  
“Let’s go,” Lily cried out in defiance. “Let’s go, let’s go!”    
  
~*~   
  
“Wait,” Taven said sharply, catching Aabha’s wrist.    
  
“Sorry, sorry,” Aabha murmured, sheepish, the golden glow fading from her fingertips. Below her, Taven carefully extracted a wisp of black smoke from a gash on a Sister’s thigh. Taven gave her a nod, and Aabha stepped in, a gentle flame cupped in her hands. Aabha haloed the Sister’s wound in her firelight’s glow, and after a moment of resistance, the spell seeped into the woman’s skin, sealing the wound without so much as a scar.    
  
“Nicely done,” Taven said with an approving smile.    
  
“Was it?” Aabha winced. “I-- I’m sorry. I’m not much of a faith healer.”   
  
“Please. You’re a natural,” Taven assured. He nudged the Valkyrie they were tending to. “She’s a natural, right, Sister?”   
  
“Her service was adequate,” the woman said, curt but not unkind. Taven helped her to her feet, testing the weight on her wounded leg. She nodded to the duo, satisfied. “I stand ready to serve once again. Thank you, Brother. And you, Agent Puri.”   
  
Aabha dipped her head into a bow, watching as the Valkyrie sauntered off to mend the splintered gap in her leg armor. A wound, smoothed away as if it had never happened. But for a moment, the scent of the woman’s blood lingered in the air and clung to Aabha’s senses. She sniffed, and flinched, shaking her head.    
  
Taven frowned. “Are you alright?”   
  
“I’m fine,” Aabha said quickly. A tinge of crimson briefly flicked across her eyes, but was gone in an eyeblink.    
  
“For someone with no prior experience, you take to faith healing quite well,” Taven urged.    
  
“I was never trained,” Aabha shrugged. “I wanted to, believe me. After how my power manifested…”   
  
Aabha made a face. She cleared her throat.    
  
“...Sorry. It’s a long story. The point is, after my Awakening, all my fire had done was hurt people. I wanted to do more, be more. Serve. Protect. Be a hero.”    
  
Aabha scoffed and shook her head, lips curling into a rueful smile.    
  
“...It turns out fire’s only really good for burning things. I wish I was a miracle worker, like you.”   
  
“I am merely a conduit for something greater than myself,” Taven said. “As are you.”   
  
Aabha chuckled, her smile growing more genuine. “...You know, it’s funny. Agent Crane told me something similar. But the way she said it didn’t sound all that uplifting. She said that we were just pawns; just tiny pieces of a vast machine.”   
  
“Does that unsettle you?” Taven wondered.    
  
“A little.”   
  
“Why?” Taven asked. “What do you want to be?”   
  
Aabha blew out a sigh. She glanced down at the Order crest on her chestplate, reaching up and anxiously tugging at her braid.    
  
“...I wanted to be a hero,” Aabha began. “I wanted to do something good. Something right. I want to  _ be _ someone. But now that it comes down to it… I don’t know what I am. I’m no leader. No healer. I can fight, I guess, but I’m no soldier. I don’t know  _ what _ I am.”   
  
“You are who you are,” Taven urged. “That is enough.”   
  
Aabha just shook her head.    
  
“Is it?”   
  
Taven didn’t know what to say to that. He glanced away, troubled. Aabha took a deep breath and sighed. She clutched Morgan’s starry robe to her chest, restlessly wringing her hands into the fabric...   
  
“What are they waiting for?” Kit wondered, on the edge of their camp. She was pacing, staring out into the sandstorm and the ghouls lurking within, their shining red eyes watching, doing nothing.    
  
“Who knows the workings of a mind twisted by Malice?” Mirai scoffed. She was standing stock still, spear and shield at the ready, a stark, sculpted contrast to Kit’s relentless pacing. “Perhaps they’re smart enough to know when they’re outmatched. Perhaps, without their Master personally cracking the whip, these vermin know better than to go rushing to their deaths.”   
  
Kit scowled, idly flourishing her blades. “I wish they’d just get it over with. All this waiting around is killing me.”   
  
“Such is the life of a soldier,” Mirai mused. “You spend hours, days, weeks on edge, and then the fight comes and goes in a matter of minutes. The erratic rhythm of a soldier’s life. Wait, then hurry up. Hurry up, then wait.”   
  
“That sounds like that would get old  _ real _ quick,” Kit said.    
  
A few hours ago, Mirai might have snapped at Kit for her candor. But now, Kit’s bluntness managed to coax a bemused smile onto Mirai’s face.    
  
“It helps if you have something to focus on,” Mirai admitted.    
  
Kit glanced knowingly across their impromptu field hospital. Taven caught her eye and acknowledged her with a nod.    
  
“...or someone?” Kit asked.    
  
Mirai shot her a look. She turned away with a huff.    
  
“The Valkyries shall know no fear and no pain,” Mirai recited, somber. “There is no fear. There is no pain. There is only the mission. There is only the next mission.”   
  
~*~   
  
“There! You’ve got it!” Vincent cried.    
  
Lila flipped a switch, and the skimmer’s gravitic drive roared to life, the repulsor ring bathing them in a fierce blue glow. Lila whooped, cheered, and jumped up to give Vincent a high-five, only to mutter a string of sheepish apologies when they both forgot Vincent’s hands were still stinging.   
  
“Lily!” Lila called, hopping into the skimmer and hoisting Vincent aboard. “Lily! Let’s go!”   
  
Lily blasted a leaping ghoul with her cryo rifle, snap freezing it in mid-air. She casually stepped aside and let it smash itself to pieces as it hit the ground. She heard the whooshing roar of Strike Two lighting its drives behind her, turned, and jumped.    
  
The skimmer scooped her up, Lily diving into Lila’s waiting arms. Vincent threw a lever on his console and they shot forward, smashing through another dozen ghouls and bouncing them off of the Remora’s hull.    
  
“Where to, princess?” Vincent called.    
  
Violet lightning above, ghouls swarming below. Lily shook her head in exasperation.    
  
“Anywhere but here!”   
  
Vincent flashed her a daredevil grin. “You got it.”   
  
Strike Two shot across the plains, just over the heads of the horde of ghouls-- or not quite above their heads, as Vincent saw fit to smash his way through the swarm, ghouls knocking into the Remora’s hull like pebbles in their path.    
  
Lily sank into a seat beside Lila. After her impulsive, adrenaline-fueled leap onto the skimmer, she was still trying to catch her breath. Lila, who’d just finished hotwiring a hovercraft under urgent time pressure, was similarly still riding the high.    
  
“How are we doing?” Lily asked.    
  
“Well, you know,” Lila laughed, shrill and cut through with nerves. “The skimmer’s guns are offline, the top hull plates won’t close, and repulsor ring’s practically held together by duct tape and hot glue. But we’re still flying!”   
  
“Thanks to you,” Lily grinned.    
  
“And Vince, but mostly me,” Lila teased.    
  
“ _ Thanks _ , blondie,” Vincent called. Lila blew him a kiss.    
  
“Hey,” Lily began, gently. She leaned in, taking Lila’s shoulder with a squeeze. “How are you doing?”   
  
“...Fine…” Lila started, but shook her head. She couldn’t lie to Lily’s eyes. “...Fried. I mean, this is… this is crazy, isn’t it? Sandstorms, magic, monsters. It’s a far cry from just… dealing with mobsters back on Persephone. At least that was something I knew how to handle. But all this…”   
  
Lila blew out a sigh. She took Lily’s hand and squeezed.    
  
“...I wish Aabha and Kit were here,” Lila whispered.    
  
“I know,” Lily murmured. “Listen. If I tell you we’ll make it, will you believe me?”   
  
“Yes,” Lila said, with the utmost conviction. “Always.”   
  
“ _ I _ might not believe you,” Vincent offered blithely.    
  
The Chase sisters giggled, the tender moment broken, Lila kicking the back of Vincent’s chair in indignation.    
  
A shadow loomed over the trio.    
  
Lila cried out in alarm. Vincent yelped and yanked on his controls, throwing the skimmer into a drift. A ship fell out of the air nose-first and slammed into the ground like an artillery shell, throwing up a huge pillar of dirt and debris. The Remora’s hull crunched and scraped against the side of the wreck, the gravitic core stalling and misfiring.    
  
Vincent fought with his controls, muttering and cursing, as the ship’s bulk began to tip. With a tremendous groaning, the disabled ship fell forward, crashing down on the trio’s heads--   
  
But they did not die. There was a crunch of metal, and the falling wreck ground to a halt. In the distance, they saw a huge figure silhouetted by the sandstorm, their armor’s servos whirring and buzzing, straining to take the weight. They cut a striking figure, like Atlas holding up the sky.    
  
There was a pair of pneumatic hisses. Twin grapnel lines shot out of the shadows, coiled into the Remora’s hull, and yanked. The Remora, still suspended on its frictionless anti-gravity field, sailed smoothly out from under the shipwreck and out into the light.    
  
There was a woman in black and midnight blue waiting for them beyond the wreck. Her sword flashed in her hands. With a single stroke, a dozen slashes of violet light appeared frozen in the air, before shooting outward, slicing the falling ship into neat sections. The figure who would be Atlas shoved the wreck away, the debris crashing to earth and swallowing them up in the expanding dust cloud.    
  
As the dust settled, a familiar face stepped out of the wreckage, his off-white ceramite armor stained with splotches of brown like tilled soil. He studied the members of Strike Two, clapping the dirt from his gauntlets.    
  
“Hey, guys,” Kresnik said, astonishingly casual. “Did you get my call?”   
  
Lily, Lila, and Vincent exchanged glances. The swordswoman in the midnight blue haori acknowledged them with a nod. Raney appeared beside her, camo-cloak blowing in the wind, her grapnel lines disengaging from the Remora’s hull and zipping back into her gloves.    
  
Lily blinked up at them, incredulous.    
  
“...Thanks for saving us,” Lila offered, breaking the stunned quiet.    
  
“We were in the neighborhood,” Kresnik shrugged his huge armored shoulders. “Nothing personal. You understand.”   
  
“Kresnik,” Lily said gravely. “What do you know about this?”   
  
~*~   
  
“Would you like me to try again?”   
  
Aabha glanced up, roused from her thoughts. She met Taven’s eyes, soft with concern, and glanced down at Morgan’s robe bundled in her arms.    
  
“...Oh,” she said. “No, thank you. You’ve already done enough.”   
  
“He is alive,” Taven assured her. “I can feel his magic signature all around us. But I am no Psion, I’m afraid. No dedicated telepath. I am sorry that I cannot divine his location more closely.”   
  
“It’s alright,” Aabha murmured.    
  
“He’s very dear to you, isn’t he?” Taven asked.    
  
“I mean, he and Syl practically raised me,” Aabha admitted, tugging at her braid. “I’m sorry. That probably sounds bad. My actual parents did the best they could. One of them, at least. That’s another long story.”   
  
“You’re full of long stories, it seems,” Taven smiled.   
  
Aabha smiled, but it was a pained smile. “...I’m the reason Morgan and Syl are stuck here on Providence. Syl was a soldier, so I’m not  _ too _ worried about her. But Morgan always seemed more at home in a classroom than in the field. I need to find them. I need to get them out of this mess.”   
  
Aabha groaned, pawing at her face.    
  
“...That’s not even our main objective. I’m sorry,” Aabha sighed. “We’re supposed to be looking for Archmagus Kalani, and all I can think about are my own friends.”   
  
“Of course you are,” Taven shrugged. “So would any of us.”   
  
“Really?” Aabha blinked. “But you’re the best of us. The Order Elite. You are the Valkyries.”   
  
“‘The Valkyries choose the living and the dead’,” Taven recited. “The Sisters always make it sound so valiant, so noble. I don’t see our creed that way. I’ve always thought it was more somber than that. A grim admission that we can’t save everyone.”   
  
“Agent Puri?” Mirai called, marching up.    
  
Aabha scrambled to her feet. “Yes, ser?”   
  
“A word.”   
  
Aabha nodded to Taven and walked off, joining Mirai on the edge of their makeshift camp. Kit lingered nearby, her hands on the hilts of her swords. She brushed against Aabha as she walked past, sharing a host of feeling in a single touch.    
  
Mirai stood, her pearl-white armor scuffed and stained, her crimson cloak frayed and billowing behind her. She crossed her arms, gazing across the plains, unable to meet Aabha’s eyes.    
  
“Agent Puri,” Mirai began. “Are the wounded back on their feet?”   
  
“Yes, ser.”   
  
“...Good.”   
  
Mirai took a deep breath and sighed.    
  
“...Our mission profile has been compromised,” Mirai said quietly. “The distortion field is so strong that our communications have been gutted. We’ve lost contact with the fleet. We’ve lost contact with the Talon. So far, we have been unable to fulfill our primary objective, to locate and extract Archmagus Kalani. We have been unable to find Senior Agents Morgan and Sylwyn Telerian. And in a single skirmish, this company has taken greater losses than it has throughout the entirety of my predecessor’s career.”   
  
Mirai turned, and finally met Aabha’s eyes. It felt like Aabha was truly seeing her for the very first time.    
  
“If you and Enforcer Sato wish to abandon this disastrous command, I’ll not think ill of you for it,” Mirai murmured, her voice trembling.    
  
“Kit and I aren’t going anywhere,” Aabha reassured, “and neither are your troops. Those brave women will follow you anywhere. Even unto death.”   
  
“I know,” Mirai said gravely. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”   
  
“The Valkyries know no fear,” Aabha offered.    
  
“Indeed,” Mirai scoffed, bitter. “Then I am no Valkyrie. And if I’m not a Valkyrie, then what am I?”   
  
Aabha placed a hand on Mirai’s shoulder. Mirai went stiff, but did not push her away.    
  
“A person,” Aabha said softly.    
  
Mirai blew out a shuddering breath. She stood there for a long moment, staring up at the sky.    
  
“We can still proceed,” Aabha said before she could stop herself, slowly growing more confident with every word. “We can investigate the source of the arcane storm-- a task easier said than done, I’m aware. But if nothing else, the pillar is a landmark we don’t need maps or comms to navigate to. And between us and that pillar, there are countless people who need our help, countless fights that need to be won. We can’t help them all, but if we just start with the ones on the way, and take targets of opportunity as they come…”   
  
“The Valkyries choose the living and the dead,” Mirai whispered, like a prayer.    
  
“We can’t save worlds, but we can save people,” Aabha said. “One person at a time.”   
  
Their eyes met. Mirai clasped Aabha’s wrist in gratitude.    
  
“Sister Mirai,” Taven called. They turned to see Taven and Mirai’s other officers, Bryn and Sigrun marching up to meet her, lugging a heavy portable comms unit between them.    
  
“Captain, you should hear this,” Sigrun urged.   
  
“What do you have?” Mirai demanded.    
  
Taven met her eyes, his face pinched with dread.    
  
“Our next mission.”   
  
Sisters Bryn and Sigrun fussed with the dials on the comms caster, coaxing a signal out of the flood of noise. Garbled by the Malefic distortion field and the ensuing arcane storm, a transmission nonetheless began to emerge in bits and pieces amid the sea of static. A panicked voice, calling out…   
  
_ “...this is… -ms officer of the cruiser Basilisk… requesting support. I repeat, this is command cruiser Basilisk. We are in an uncontrolled descent, requesting support…” _   
  
~*~


	4. Remnants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Broken pieces, scattered to the wind. Frayed threads, twisting and tangling.

~*~  
  
From a distance, a falling starship doesn’t look like a catastrophe. It seems slow. Stately, even. As it falls, trailing plumes of dirty black smoke and scattered flames, from a distance, it still has a sort of elegance to it. A tragic dignity. It’s almost… beautiful. Mesmerizing in its dread. Like staring into the headlights of an onrushing train. Or watching a mushroom cloud bloom on the horizon.    
  
A moment of quiet that could almost be mistaken for peace.    
  
“Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is strike cruiser Basilisk!”   
  
Soren grunted as the ship lurched forward, sending him sliding down the deck. He braced himself against a console, shooting a glance across the bridge to the comms officer scrabbling at her headset.    
  
“We’ve lost power and have entered an uncontrolled descent! Requesting immediate support!”   
  
“Shields?” Soren called.    
  
“No shields, sir!”   
  
“Power?”   
  
“Sir!” An officer called. “The primary drive core is offline. Auxiliary generators are active at 25% capacity.”   
  
“Divert all available power to propulsion,” Soren ordered. “Engage retrorockets to slow our descent.”   
  
“Sir,” the drive officer replied, “retrorockets are jammed and not responding. I’ve lost control.”   
  
Soren pinched the bridge of his nose. He took a deep breath, and sighed.    
  
“...How long to abandon ship?” he asked quietly.    
  
An officer behind him shook his head.    
  
“...Too long.”   
  
Soren blew out a breath. He turned to the comms officer, who flinched at the ferocity of his gaze.    
  
“Keep trying,” he urged. He tapped a shimmering finger against his temples. “Send a psionic echo along with the standard link. Power systems, give me just enough to boost our broadcasting range and send the rest to propulsion.”   
  
“Yes, sir,” the bridge crew chorused.   
  
The comms officer adjusted her headset, melding her link with her own telepathic abilities. When next she spoke, the outgoing radio signal was echoed by a second psionic message on a mental channel.    
  
“This is strike cruiser Basilisk,” she repeated, swallowing her fear. “We’ve lost power and are in uncontrolled descent. Requesting immediate support. Is there anyone out there?”   
  
Outside, the Basilisk’s hull was utterly crawling with undead. Fleshy Malefic drop pods fell out of the sky and burst open against the cruiser’s unshielded hull. Some of these, weeping smoke and wreathed in violet lightning, were nothing more than bags of corpses. But others, still intact, released a swarm of ghouls across the hull, mindlessly seeking out sources of heat and scrambling for it with tooth and nail.    
  
The retrorockets along the sides of the ship were clogged with bodies, both alive and dead. Ghouls ripped and tore at the metal housing of each rocket, heedless, unthinking.    
  
Light, pure and blinding. A beam of pure gold, like sunlight parting the clouds, shot across the sky. The searing beam sliced through the swarm of ghouls, cutting them away from the Basilisk’s hull. Golden light raked across the horde, hurling their bisected bodies out into open air, falling away from the thrusters. Ghouls sloughed away like the skin of a snake, unblocking the cruiser’s retrorockets. A great gout of flame annihilated the remaining ghouls, blasting away the obstruction into ash and dust, and the Basilisk’s thrusters re-lit with a whooshing roar.    
  
Back on the bridge, the drive officer let out a cheer. He watched on his console as one by one, the Basilisk’s side thrusters were cleared and unjammed.    
  
“Retrorockets back online,” he announced. “Engines lit and firing.”   
  
Ribbons of crimson and gold streaked across the bridge windows. The comms officer looked up, elated, as the call came in:   
  
_ “This is Mirai of Order asset Talon. We’re with you.” _ _   
_ _   
_ “Sir!” the power systems officer called out. “The retrorockets are slowing our descent, but we won’t be able to regain full flight control on auxiliary power alone.”   
  
“We don’t need to,” Soren replied. “We just needed time, and that’s bought us plenty. Get the order to all stations. The ship is lost. Abandon ship! Everyone out!”   
  
The officers and bridge crew relayed the order down the line, scrambling to pack up their stations and make for the escape pods. Soren stood in the center of the flurry of activity, leaning on his sheathed sword as if it were a cane, the eye of the storm.    
  
There was a sharp bang and shriek of metal overhead, and the deck lurched underfoot. For all Soren’s stoicism and poise, even he couldn’t help a little exasperation.    
  
“What  _ now _ ?” he hissed.    
  
_ “Director!” _ a girl’s voice came over the link.    
  
Soren couldn’t help but smile. “Agent Puri?”   
  
_ “Yes, sir,” _ Aabha chirped, despite everything. _ “Assault pods have punched into your hull. You’re being boarded. They want your ship.” _ _   
_   
“They can have it,” Soren said. “Agent Puri, we’re abandoning the Basilisk, but my crew needs time to evacuate. Can I ask your assistance to repel boarders and cover the retreat?”   
  
Aabha smiled. “It would be my pleasure.”   
  
Aabha whirled and spun, her glaive dancing in her hands as she scythed through ghouls like so much wheat. Her chakrams orbited around her, mirroring Aabha’s movements, covering her blind spots while periodically flashing out to strike at unexpected angles. Kit fought at her side, prowling like a fox, flanking the ghouls dogpiling Aabha and plunging her blades into every exposed guard.    
  
“Girls!” Taven cried.    
  
Aabha glanced up. Kit yanked her down a second later, as Taven sent a pane of light flying over their heads. The flat barrier of solidified light bisected a dozen ghouls and embedded itself in the side of a boarding torpedo jutting out of the deck like an obelisk. It stuck fast, like a sword wedged into a tree trunk.    
  
Aabha looped her chakrams onto the end of her spear, gave them an artful twirl and then slung them across the deck. They punched into the sides of the boarding pod and held fast.    
  
Aabha pinched her fingers, and then pulled her hand upwards. Her chakrams shone with saffron fire, digging into the boarding pod and dragging it out of the puncture in the Basilisk’s hull. Sparks flew as the metal scraped and crunched against the ragged opening. Taven joined her, manipulating his summoned barrier to leverage the pod out. It fought against their grip, squealing and scraping. Kit joined in with a gust of magicked wind, the boarding pod lurching and loosening in its socket.    
  
Then Mirai dove down, plunged her spear into the pod, and wrenched it out of the Basilisk’s hull. She gave a great cry and flung it aside, leaving it to crash onto the fields below.    
  
“Go!” Mirai snapped.    
  
Aabha and Kit looked at each other, and nodded. They jumped into the gap in the Basilisk’s hull plating and hit the ground running.    
  
The corridors were stifling. Lights flickered. Klaxons blared. The sounds of frantic gunfire and distant screams melded with the pressurized hiss of closing hatches and the whooshing roar of escape pods being launched.    
  
At the head of a corridor, a crewman was tantalizingly close to an escape pod. He ran into the wall, tapped a code into the wall console. The hatch opened up with a pneumatic hiss.   
  
But then the ghouls were upon him. He turned, frantically drawing his sidearm and firing into the mass of swiping hands and snapping jaws.    
  
Aabha’s chakrams flew through the pack, leaving a trail of blazing, cauterized limbs where they went. Kit dove into battle with glee, her burning swords flashing in her hands, cutting the pack apart in a flurry of blows. She dropped the last ghoul face down on the deck, casually deflecting the crewman’s shot into the ceiling when he fired without thinking.    
  
“Relax,” Kit grinned, as the crewman sheepishly lowered his pistol.    
  
“Trooper, which way to the bridge?” Aabha asked.    
  
The crewman pointed. Aabha and Kit bundled him into the escape pod, sealing the hatch behind him, and launched the pod with a hiss.    
  
On the bridge, Soren was doing the same. A hatch sealed shut with a hiss; a muffled whoosh a second later. Another half-dozen of his bridge staff safely away.    
  
Soren was tapping at the commlink in his gauntlet while in the threshold of another pod. His officers glanced at their own comms, studying a hololithic map projected from the ceiling.    
  
“We rendezvous at these coordinates in one hour,” Soren was saying. “I want a full headcount and casualty report, and an update on the situation on the ground--”   
  
Soren glanced up, his senses flaring.   
  
Two metal spikes punched into the hatch an instant after they hissed shut. Soren pounded the pod release, heard the bang of the escape pods thrusters firing, and then recoiled. A swiping claw missed him by inches; a second swipe caught him by the collar and hurled him the length of the bridge.    
  
Soren righted himself in mid-air, landing nimbly on his feet. The armored figure coiled its inhumanly legs beneath its body and pounced, launching itself across the bridge like a bullet, spinning, its claws outstretched. Soren swatted the figure out of the air with a crack of his sword sheath, spinning it in his hand and planting it in the deck. The phantom lunged, trailing smoke--   
  
Soren drew his sword. It sang as it left the scabbard, hissing like a serpent, and sent eerie shadows dancing across the floor. Dark magic emanated from the blade like an aura of black fire. The figure lunged once more.    
  
Soren’s blade did not flash in the light. It did the opposite; gathering the shadows in the room and pulling them taut, sharpening them to an obsidian glint. The shadows flickered, and there was an awful metallic shriek-- and the figure recoiled, a dozen straight gouges in its pristine brass armor.    
  
Lasfire down the hall. A boarding party of Malefic troopers tromped up the corridor, shouldered their rifles, and opened fire. Soren swiveled on his feet, searing lasbolts whizzing past, flashing as they cracked against his ghostfire sword and the bolts deflected against the walls.    
  
The armored figure did not patiently wait for Soren to deal with his new opponents. It came at him again, claw gauntlets flashing. Soren grunted, parrying attacks from all sides, forced down to his knees.    
  
A flurry of superheated blades cleaved into the boarding party from behind. Aabha and Kit tore through the troopers and dropped them to the deck.    
  
“Director!” Aabha cried.    
  
The figure smashed an armored boot into Soren’s stomach, cracked the blade from his grip and clamped its fingers around his throat. It hurled him across the room, before it noticed Aabha and Kit behind it. It turned to face them.    
  
Aabha stopped short with a gasp.    
  
A figure encased in dull, brass armor. A spiky, insectoid figure too thin and long-limbed to be human. Hooded and cloaked with some sort of shroud that rendered most of its body, save its claws, into a smoky haze. Its face a featureless brass mask, with a single, empty, unblinking eye.    
  
Phantom pain flashed through Aabha’s abdomen. She clutched her stomach, remembering the armored daemon-knight that had been unleashed upon them at Site 17. A beast constructed by the Syndicate, but commissioned by the cultists of the Blood Pact. Father Cyrus flashed across her eyes.    
  
_ The Project will continue.  _ _   
_ _   
_ Aabha felt a hand on her shoulder and flinched-- but blew out a breath when she saw it was just Kit. Kit glowered at the phantom down the hall, before turning and meeting Aabha’s eyes. She tapped one of her swords against Aabha’s spear in salute, the energized blades hissing as they clashed.    
  
“I’m with you,” Kit declared. “This time, we won’t lose.”   
  
The phantom lunged at them, claws outstretched, spinning like a deranged mechanical corkscrew. Aabha shouldered her spear and fired a lance beam down the hall. Golden plasma spattered against the figure’s claws, deflecting in cascades of sparks and leaving molten gouges in the walls. With a metallic shriek, the beam broke through the beast’s guard and stopped it in its tracks.    
  
Kit howled a battle cry and dove forward with a beat of her armor’s ghostly wings. She smashed into the phantom, carved an X into its chestplate with a tight, scissoring cut, and then kept flying, the sheer vacuum force of her flight dragging the phantom down the hall behind her. She tucked into a roll and let the phantom fly over her head, skittering across the deck like a stone across a pond.    
  
The phantom flipped onto its feet like a spider, before pushing up off the ground and back upright. Kit’s swords came flashing down. The phantom caught Kit by the wrists, stunned her with a headbutt, and contemptuously hurled her aside.    
  
Two sharp cracks-- two searing gouges across the phantom’s back. Aabha’s chakrams flew back into her grip, but stopped in mid-air, doubling back for another strike. The two ring blades danced around it, slashing and scraping, stabbing from all angles. Aabha kept her distance, conducting the dancing blades as if it were a symphony. She gestured with her spear as if she were running an oar through water, guiding the currents her chakrams flew upon.    
  
The phantom let out a low, rumbling rasp, as if in frustration. It smashed the chakrams out of the air with its armored fists, sending them clattering to the floor. It stomped down on them with its three-clawed boots, holding them in place, preventing them from taking flight.    
  
Aabha flicked her wrist. Her chakrams flashed and slid up the figure’s boots, hooking around its ankles. They flew back towards Aabha, obeying her silent command and yanking the phantom off of its feet. Aabha leapt, haloed in fire like a goddess of war, ready to plunge her spear into the figure’s chest. But the phantom lashed out with its inhumanly long legs and kicked Aabha away.    
  
Kit dove in on a plume of conjured wind, slicing out the backs of the phantom’s knees. As the phantom reared back, she curled into a spinning slash, slamming it down onto the deck. Kit plunged her blades down, but the phantom slid out of her grasp, darting out between her legs and flipping up onto her back, its clawed boots latching onto her shoulder. It flipped over her, its spring-like legs launching her into the ceiling. Kit smashed into a lighting fixture and then fell back onto the deck, sparks falling all around her.    
  
Kit wheezed, clutching her chest, her swords smashed from her grip. An armored fist clamped around her wrist, then her throat, lifting her up like a trophy.    
  
Kit punched her dagger into the phantom’s eye. It recoiled and flinched away from the blow, releasing its grip on Kit. It glowered at her, a gouge cut diagonally across its faceplate.    
  
Aabha yanked Kit back and put her hand over the phantom’s face. Saffron fire erupted from her palm and engulfed the beast in a pillar of flame. It screamed, an awful screeching like scraping metal, and smashed her aside.    
  
Aabha hit the ground hard, already feeling the beginnings of a bruised cheek from the phantom’s stunning backhand. But the flames had burned away the phantom’s smoke-cloak, and the toll they were taking on its body was becoming clear.    
  
They caught the figure between them and forced it to fend off attacks from every angle, Aabha’s sweeping spear slashes keeping its claws at bay, Kit’s swords dancing in her hands, Aabha’s chakrams flying in at odd angles, sparks flying from every impact.    
  
The phantom buckled under their assault. It lashed out in desperation, flooring Kit with a spring-loaded kick and yanking Aabha forward by her spear haft, only to smash its elbows into her throat. Aabha gagged and stumbled back, stunned. The phantom turned on Kit and redoubled its efforts on her, catching her by the shoulder with a clawed gauntlet and slamming her facedown onto the floor. Kit yelped as the phantom’s claws raked across her back.    
  
A huge gout of saffron flame slammed into the phantom and hurled it across the bridge.    
  
“Kit!” Aabha cried.    
  
“I’m okay,” Kit hissed through gritted teeth.    
  
She got to her feet, the back of her armor ruptured and sparking. She snarled in frustration, adjusting her grip on her swords.    
  
“I can’t pin it down,” Kit warned. “It’s too quick!”   
  
“We can do it!” Aabha cried, stubborn. She raised her hand, a fiery sigil orbiting around her wrist.    
  
A pillar of flame engulfed the phantom once more. It flinched, at first, but this time it glowered at Aabha through the spiraling flames. Undeterred, it clenched its fingers into fists, fusing its clawed fingers into blades. It coiled its long limbs behind it, heedless of the fire sending molten brass weeping down its skeletal frame, and pounced.    
  
Aabha saw her attacker coming. She saw the prototype at Site 17 forcing her against a wall, its clawed fingers fusing into a cone and running her throat. She felt the spike of phantom pain roil through her gut. She faltered for just a moment, closed her eyes--   
  
A shining golden barrier stopped the phantom in its tracks and hurled it back across the deck.    
  
A Valkyrie stepped forward-- an Amazon of a woman with dark hair and olive skin. Her armor wasn’t the pearl white of Order asset Talon, but instead resplendent in crimson and gold, well worn but well cared for. And when she spoke, it was with the authority of the divine.    
  
The phantom screeched at her. The woman raised her hand, and made a sign with her fingers.    
  
“Hush,” she spoke, like a commandment.    
  
Golden light leapt from her fingers and smashed the phantom off its feet, crushing it against the far wall. Its armor cracked and crumbled, oozing black smoke, and the edges of its form began to smoke and sizzle.    
  
The phantom staggered to its feet, defiant. Immediately, a dozen sword slashes exploded across its armored form. It turned, creaking, the joints of its armor melting and fusing together. It saw Soren, finally back on his feet, his ghostfire sword pulsing in his grip.    
  
The phantom turned, surveying the room, still cast in the golden glow of the Valkyrie’s sigil. Its eyeless gaze flitted between the Valkyrie, to Aabha hovering protectively over Kit, to Soren, winded and weary. Desperate to claim at least one victim, the phantom flexed its clawed fingers, and coiled its legs beneath itself one last time.    
  
The phantom lunged. The Valkyrie spoke. The phantom’s ruined form, armor gouged and melting, engulfed in golden fire, flew across the bridge, claws still aimed for Soren’s throat.    
  
Soren stepped aside. He let the phantom slam into the far wall of the last escape pod, sealed the hatch in its face, and pounded the pod release. The pod thrusters roared as they rocketed the phantom away to a high-velocity grave. He slid his sword back into its sheath, and took a long, slow breath.    
  
“Thank you,” Aabha blurted out, helping Kit to her feet. She bowed her head in deference to the unfamiliar Valkyrie. “That was amazing.”   
  
The Valkyrie acknowledged her with a nod. “I have fought them before. And I will fight them again.”   
  
“Eh, we had it on the ropes,” Kit managed a grin. It didn’t last. “...What was that thing, anyway?”   
  
“A Hollow,” she said gravely. “A servant of Dogma. I suspect this one was artificially made. Second generation. It would not be so easy to kill a true Hollow.”   
  
“‘Easy’?!” Kit balked.    
  
The deck lurched beneath their feet. Klaxons blared overhead. A computerized voice echoed across the bridge.    
  
_ “Altitude warning. Collision imminent. All hands, brace for impact.” _ _   
_ _   
_ Kit’s wings flickered, unstable, at her shoulders. Aabha and Kit exchanged looks.   
  
“Take her,” the Valkyrie said, her voice a low, smoky rumble. “I’ll take the Director.”   
  
She said it with such calm conviction, such mature authority, that it cut through Aabha’s nerves in a heartbeat. Soren didn’t bat an eye as the Valkyrie scooped him into her arms like a babe. He pressed a key on his bracer and a hatch hissed open, exposing an empty escape pod tube and the howling of the wind rushing past.    
  
The Valkyrie leapt out of the sinking Basilisk, her wings trailing a golden glow like a comet. Aabha bundled Kit into her arms and leapt after her, trailing a plume of saffron flame.    
  
The stricken cruiser crashed onto Providence’s plains, forming new metallic hills to join the grassy ones. A cloud of dirt and debris flew up at the impact, briefly choking out the sky-- but in that darkness, there were stars.    
  
_ “Mirai to all signs,” _ Aabha’s link crackled.  _ “Confirm precious cargo?” _   
  
“Confirmed, Sister Mirai,” Aabha called back. “We have him. Transmitting coordinates for rendezvous point now.”   
  
“Nicely done,” the Valkyrie rumbled. “I can see you two are rather… unorthodox sisters. You are no veterans, not yet. But you do fine work.”   
  
“You’re not too bad yourself, grandma,” Kit grinned.    
  
“Kit!” Aabha hissed.    
  
The Valkyrie chuckled.    
  
“...Call me Elise.”   
  
“This is hardly Exalted Elise’s first time fighting the Enemy of all life,” Soren lamented. “But we’ve never fought anything like this. The distortion field is far stronger than any of us anticipated. Our communications, both mental and mechanical, have been gutted. This invasion is coming apart at the seams.”   
  
“Come on,” Kit scoffed. “Any one of us is worth a hundred ghouls, at least.”   
  
“And yet we are still outnumbered one thousand to one,” Elise said gravely.    
  
“The enemy is regrouping,” Soren said patiently. “We should do the same.”   
  
~*~   
  
Sunset on Providence. As the daylight faded from the sky, so, too, did the vivid violet and crimson gleam of undeath fade from the eyes of the Enemy. Ghouls growled, low in their throats, moving in the dark, leaving an eerie quiet like the silence after a bomb goes off.    
  
One ghoul poked its head out of the shadows, creeping along a man-made alley bracketed by the wrecks of fallen starships. It lifted its head, sniffing the air. The sorcerous light in its eyes was a dull red gleam, like redeye captured by an old photograph-- the streak of light that took its head off, like the flash of a camera.    
  
The ghoul’s ruined form crumpled to the ground. Raney panned her scope around, scanning the surrounding wrecks and the impromptu labyrinth of scrap metal they had become.    
  
_ “What’s the word, Raney?” _ Kresnik crackled into her link.    
  
“Clear,” Raney reported.    
  
The mercenary trio had escorted Lily, Lila, and Vincent across the plains to Kresnik’s ship, the Dragonfly-- or what was left of it. The arcane storm had turned the surrounding wasteland into a ship graveyard of smoldering hulks. They’d spent a harried evening picking their way through the ruins, hounded by ghouls at every turn, only to find the Dragonfly in the middle of that mess, surprisingly intact.    
  
Now, they were sprawled across crates and couch cushions on the floor of the Dragonfly’s battered cargo bay, grateful for the chance to finally get off their feet.    
  
“Why have they stopped?” Lila wondered. She was sitting beside the makeshift campfire in the center of the cargo bay, hugging her knees to her chest. “They’re, like… zombies, right? Do they need to sleep?”   
  
“Who knows?” Kresnik rumbled, shrugging his broad, armored shoulders. “Not that I’m complaining about the breather. Trust me, shit like this, you gotta get whatever rest you can get, whenever you can get it.”   
  
“I hear that,” Vincent said. He was laying on the floor, his hands behind his head, already half-asleep. He yelped as a hot ration pack hit him in the face.    
  
The swordswoman in the midnight-blue haori-- Ophelia-- just rolled her eyes. She fished out two more packs from the pot of water simmering above the campfire, and handed them to Lily and Lila. Lily poked a straw into the pack and took a welcome sip of rehydrated soup.    
  
“So,” Ophelia asked. “How are you kids feeling?”   
  
Lila took a sip of her ration pack and winced. She doubled over, clutching her stomach.    
  
“...Like I wish you hadn’t reminded me I had eaten so little today,” Lila muttered. “My whole body’s on fire.”   
  
“Yeah, that’s how it goes,” Raney said knowingly. She dropped down from her lookout perch and passed behind Ophelia, who held up a ration pack for her without even looking. She poked a straw into it and sipped. “When you’re in the fight and your blood’s pumping, the last thing you’re feeling is hungry, or thirsty, or tired. But you need to stay on top of that during the day, or as soon as the adrenaline stops it’ll hit you like a brick.”   
  
The sun dipped below the horizon. The golden dusk made way for a night tinged by the arcane storm in the distance and the filthy green light of the Breach, high above.    
  
Lily sipped her soup, lost in thought. Beside her, Lila was massaging her aching calves.    
  
“Lila.”   
  
“Yeah?”   
  
“Do you have my derringer?”   
  
“Oh, yeah,” Lily said. She caught the pistol as it slid down her sleeve, almost as smoothly as Lily herself, and handed it over.    
  
“...Sorry,” Lila said, sheepish. “I went through my stock a lot faster than I thought…”   
  
Lily clicked open the revolver’s barrel-- only one shot left. She made a face.    
  
“...Maybe I should hold on to this,” Lily said. She clipped it into the quickdraw system against her forearm and carefully slid it back up her sleeve.    
  
“Ooh,” Ophelia said, sitting up. “Can I see your rifle?”   
  
“Huh?” Lily blinked. “Sure.”   
  
Lily unslung the cryo rifle from her shoulder and carefully passed it over. Ophelia hefted the unfamiliar weapon, whistling appreciatively.    
  
“Do you like it? It’s proprietary,” Kresnik chuckled. “That’s a first-gen cryo rifle. The Exchange thought it up. Useless if they’ve got shields, but if they don’t…”   
  
“This thing must be a blast against ghouls,” Ophelia cooed. “Just fire a beam at knee-level, get a whole horde of their legs shattered and on the ground, helpless.”   
  
“Yeah,” Lily smiled fondly. “Too bad it eats through power cells like a bitch.”   
  
Kresnik frowned, tapping his chin. He stood up, moving over to a stand of lockers in the corner of the cargo bay. He fished a key out of his jacket pocket, clicked it into a padlock, and swung the door open.    
  
“Makes me glad I didn’t spring for no fancy electronic locks,” Kresnik chuckled. “Here.”   
  
Lily grunted as she caught the rifle Kresnik tossed into her lap, followed by a magazine. She clicked the magazine into place, a small indicator light blinking green above the grip. Lila, similarly, found herself with a new pistol.    
  
“The big problem with slugthrowers is having to lug around hard rounds,” Kresnik said. “In this shitshow, you don’t want to be stuck worrying too much about ammo.”   
  
“That’s what  _ I _ told ‘em,” Vincent crowed.    
  
Lila thumped him on the head. “Okay, how does  _ your _ ammo look, then?”   
  
Vincent checked his pistols. Both of his pistols’ indicator lights were blinking yellow.    
  
“...Uh,” Vincent made a voice. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a working charger…?”   
  
“Nope,” Raney shrugged. “But you don’t need one. Look at this.”   
  
Raney’s grapnel lines whipped out of her gauntlets and coiled around Vincent’s pistols, yanking them out of his hands. They zipped into Raney’s grasp, and she ejected their depleted power cells with a click.    
  
“Hey!” Vincent protested.    
  
“Relax,” Raney said. “I’ll show you something cool.”   
  
Ophelia pulled away the cooking pot, leaving only the grate she’d used to prop it above the campfire. Raney carefully clicked open each power cell, exposing its thermal receptor, and meticulously laid it on the grate above the fire.    
  
“There’s a reason most people switch to las if they can afford it,” Raney explained. “Sure, it’s expensive up front. But being able to recharge your power cells pays off in no time. Even if there’s no electricity, just putting them over a fire will cook some juice back into them. If you’re really desperate, even your own body heat can help you squeeze out one more shot.”   
  
“Wow,” Vincent nodded, appreciative. “I wonder why the Chief never showed me that trick.”   
  
“Well, if you’re not careful, your power cell might… explode,” Raney admitted. “But trust me, kid. I’ve been at this a long time. I know what I’m doing.”   
  
“Wow…” Lila cooed, in awe. “You guys are real pros, huh?”   
  
“You bet,” Kresnik said. “What are you, fifteen? Sixteen?”   
  
“ _ Eighteen _ ,” Lila huffed.    
  
“Still,” Kresnik shrugged. “I’ve been in this business since before you were born. I’m old enough to be your dad, blondie. Raney don’t look it, but she’s even older than me.”   
  
“ _ Thank _ you, Nik,” Raney rolled her eyes.    
  
“Trust me, kiddo,” Kresnik grinned. “Mercenaries don’t get old by being easy to kill.”   
  
“Wow…” Lila murmured. “You guys are so… cool!”   
  
“Aww, thanks,” Ophelia smiled.    
  
“I’m nothing like that,” Lila pouted. “I’m not a soldier, or a badass bounty hunter. I’m  _ exhausted. _ I just checked my comm-- we’ve been here on Providence for six hours. Six hours! It feels like we’ve been here for six weeks! Every part of my body is sore. I feel like we didn’t even  _ do _ anything!”   
  
The three mercenaries exchanged glances.   
  
“You survived,” Kresnik grunted. “That’s not nothing.”   
  
“Who knows how long that will last…” Lila muttered, blowing out a frazzled sigh.    
  
The mood darkened. The campfire sent long, flickering shadows up the walls of the Dragonfly’s cargo bay. In the distance, the false moonlight of the Breach glowered its filthy, toxic green. Beyond their campfire’s little aura of warmth and light, the darkness pressed in around them. The silence filled with the chittering of distant ghouls, the gnawing whispers of anxiety and fear.    
  
“What about you?” Lily asked, breaking the crushing silence. “What happened to you guys?”   
  
Ophelia whistled. Raney blew out a sigh.    
  
“Well,” Kresnik muttered. “Ain’t that a question and a half.”   
  
“What were you even doing this far in the Core?” Vincent wondered. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but most of the jobs around here are, uh… legal.”   
  
“Says the ex-Syndicate bomb maker,” Lila muttered.    
  
“We didn’t come here by choice,” Ophelia said. “We were out in the Rim, on a mining planet called Copperfel. We got mixed up in some business with a renegade sorcerer. Maxwell.”   
  
Lily looked up with a start. “Maxwell?” she hissed.    
  
“And his apprentice,” Raney offered. “Why, do you know him?”   
  
“He hired us to steal an artifact from the Order,” Kresnik explained. “This… green crystal dagger-looking thing. Called it the Rift Needle. We did the job, we were ready to get paid, but then he did some crazy magic shit and teleported us across the goddamn galaxy.”   
  
“What? Bullshit,” Vincent said.    
  
“It’s true,” Raney said. “And even that, he said, was just a test before the real thing.”   
  
“The Breach,” Lila murmured, aghast.    
  
Ophelia nodded. “He needed someone to power the spell. A sacrifice, or something. He was going to use us. But then his apprentice turned on him.”   
  
“We jumped back in the Dragonfly and tried to get the fuck out of there, but by the time we broke atmo, there was a daemon fleet waiting for us,” Raney continued. “We crashed. Nik and I spent all morning trying to get us flying. And then that huge lightning storm hit, and we were grounded again, and we were up to our necks in ghouls.”   
  
“But we saw what happened as we were trying to get away,” Kresnik said. “That little girl killed him. She sacrificed Maxwell to the Rift Needle. She opened the Breach. She’s the one who’s sending this whole planet straight to Hell.”   
  
Lily, Lila, and Vincent stared at each other. Lily swallowed hard.    
  
“Kresnik,” Lily began. “Where is she now?”   
  
~*~   
  
“Over there!”   
  
She darted around the corner of a smoldering wreck, lasbolts kicking up dirt at her feet and cracking against the metal. She took a moment to catch her breath, her heart racing in her chest. She glanced down at the artifact tucked under her cloak, its filthy green light a mirror to the false moon, high above.    
  
A pair of feral ghouls stirred beside her. They sniffed the air, tasting the Rift Needle’s power, before setting their empty-eyed gaze upon her. They lunged, shrieking and swiping.    
  
Nyx flexed her wrist, extending the bone spurs on her knuckles. She ducked under one swipe, punched her spurs under one of the ghoul’s ribs, and leapt. She took his partner’s head off with a single clean swipe of her scythe-bladed tail, and dropped him into the dirt, landing on all fours beside him.    
  
She lifted her head, only for the wounded ghoul’s claws to scrape at her brow, deflected across her horns. She grimaced, raising her spurs.    
  
Two sharp cracks in the distance. The ghoul crumbled, two glowing gouges through its torso.    
  
Nyx was already running, her cloak flitting in the wind.    
  
An Alliance marine, his dark armor streaked blue and white, caught the barest glimpse of Nyx and her cloak before she slipped away.    
  
A woman appeared beside him, her skin and her hair as dark as night, similarly cloaked in blue and white. Her petite frame made her easy to underestimate; the focus and ferocity in her eyes stopped men in their tracks. In her hands was a short, curved, sickle-like sword.    
  
“It’s…” the marine hesitated, warily lowering his rifle. “It’s a child.”   
  
“No,” Pathfinder Imani said, her sword shining an eerie, ghostly gray. “It is a daemon.”   
  
~*~


	5. To Absent Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Distant hearts, hanging by a thread...

~*~  
  
“Shields up!”  
  
A dozen Order initiates raised their hands, shining glyphs floating at their fingertips. They traced a sign in the air before splaying their palms, clouds of color crystallizing into panes of solidified light.   
  
“Brace!”  
  
The initiates locked their conjured barriers together, the edges flashing as they sealed and fused. The energized shield wall grew into a shining dome, far greater than the sum of its parts. The colors of each individual shield bled together into the joint barrier. The filthy green, false moonlight of the Breach, high above, was met by a vivid kaleidoscope, shining in defiance.   
  
“Break!”  
  
The casters dispelled their shields. The shining barrier dissipated piece by piece into twinkling, iridescent mist.  
  
Morgan paced down the line of initiates, nodding in approval at their work.  
  
“That’s good. We’re getting there. We’re getting there.”   
  
He took a deep breath, and clapped his hands.   
  
“Again.”  
  
Serafine Crespo sat on a concrete ledge, watching Morgan walk his volunteers through conjuring and combining magical shields. Morgan’s voice, and the minds of his students silently repeating his instructions, made for some nice white noise. Far, far better than the dreadful static she got on a battlefield, surrounded by ghouls and the empty, droning minds of the dead.   
  
Sera felt her before she saw her.  
  
“You should be--”  
  
“--getting some rest?” Sera finished dryly. “Says the one whose brother is up in the middle of the night, practicing shield spells.”  
  
“Well, maybe I came up here to give him a scolding,” Syl smiled. She took a seat beside Sera on the ledge. “Missing someone?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sera sighed. She grinned. “...It might not be who you think.”  
  
“How is he, anyway?”  
  
“Who, Dylan?” Sera snorted. “I bet he’s glad he’s not in the middle of this shitshow. Living through a daemonic invasion? I almost wish I was back on Calcian. Almost.”  
  
Syl nodded. “Are you two still…?”  
  
“No, no,” Sera waved the thought away. “And before you ask, I’m not too torn up about it. We just figured the long distance thing is hard enough when you’re both on the same _planet_ , much less trucking all the way to the Core.”  
  
Sera glanced beside her. Even on a rooftop in the middle of the night, Syl was sitting up straight, hands primly folded in her lap. Always so proper, so dignified, even as the world went to hell around her.   
  
“What about you?” Sera wondered. “How’s your girlfriend? What’s-her-name… Agent Crane.”  
  
Syl chuckled. “She’s not my girlfriend. At least, not anymore.”  
  
Sera shrugged. “...Still. Do you miss her?”  
  
“Of course I do. I miss everyone on the Sparrow,” Syl said, rueful. “It feels like years since I’ve been out in the field. I’m a fighter, not a teacher. And I can’t say I wanted it to happen like this.”  
  
“You’ve only been away for a month,” Sera said.   
  
“It feels like a lot longer than that,” Syl lamented. “It’s all wrong. Me, in a classroom while Tabi’s in the field. Students forced to become soldiers.”  
  
The mood darkened. Sera glanced away, awkward. They spent a somber moment together, haloed in the gloomy green of the Breach above.   
  
“Is, uh…” Sera cleared her throat, eager to change the subject. “...is Lila out there, do you think?”  
  
“I can only hope not,” Syl said gravely. “We know there are Order forces mounting a counterattack, but we don’t know if the Sparrow was involved.”  
  
Sera hung her head. “...Oh.”  
  
“She’ll be all right,” Syl reassured. “Even if the Sparrow was part of the offensive, Lila isn’t part of the Order. They can’t make her fight. With any luck, she’ll have stayed behind, safe with the support fleet. Or as safe as you can get, when you’re on the edge of a warzone.”  
  
“Well, that’s good,” Sera blew out a sigh of relief. “...But what about Crane?”  
  
“I’m not worried about her,” Syl said, with quiet conviction. “Or the captain, or the chief, or Father Amaro. I’ve worked with them a long time. They know what they’re doing.”  
  
Sera looked up. She knew. And it didn’t take a psychic.   
  
“You’re worried about Aabha,” she breathed.   
  
“...Yes,” Syl admitted, her throat tight.   
  
“Why?” Sera asked. “I mean, didn’t you train her?”  
  
“I did. And I take pride in that fact,” Syl declared. She sighed and shook her head. “...But I don’t know if anyone could prepare her for _this_ …”  
  
There was a rumble in the distance, deep and groaning like a thunderclap. Sera felt it an instant before everyone else did; a faint but cacophonous droning. The silent cicada screaming of the unquiet dead, stolen from true death, trapped in a puppet husk until sand swallows all…  
  
Sera gasped, reeling, tipping backwards and nearly falling off the roof. Syl caught her and held her steady even as she withered under the psionic assault.   
  
Fearful murmurs rippled through the gathered initiates. They gazed out at the horizon, wondering. Morgan pushed past them all, falling to one knee at Sera’s side.   
  
Sera clutched her head, wailing. Morgan traced a sigil in the air before pressing his fingertips to Sera’s temples. Sera gasped and shuddered, clinging to Morgan’s wrists as she rode out the crushing, bewildering psionic overload.   
  
“Breathe, Sera. Breathe,” Morgan urged.   
  
Sera gasped and hiccuped. She took one shuddering breath, two, the buzzing growing dimmer but not leaving her ears. She mashed a fist into her eyes, lips curled into a grimace.   
  
“What did you see?” Syl asked.   
  
Sera looked up, from Morgan’s eyes, then Syl’s, then over their shoulders to something she felt rather than saw-- a vast shadow creeping through the clouds, and the sandstorm following in its wake. A man in black, as if in mourning, his empty eyes crumbling into sand.   
  
Sera shivered, breathless.   
  
_“He is here.”_  
  
~*~  
  
Across the plains, the Order was regrouping.   
  
The Basilisk’s mechanical corpse lay astride the dirt, forming new metal hills in the scrubland wastes. But slowly, meticulously, it was coming back to life. Thanks to the efforts of Order asset Talon, Director Kamuro and most of his staff had survived the crash intact. As soon as they had gathered at the rendezvous point and everyone was accounted for, they had returned to the Basilisk’s smoking ruin, and set about transforming it from a command ship into a command post.  
  
Soren’s bridge staff gathered around a strategium display, a table-sized version of the smaller, lectern-sized holoterminal they had aboard the Sparrow. A three-dimensional hologram of the surrounding area resolved in the air above them. One by one, operators added data points to the map-- places and people of interest, choke points, civilian centers, allied and enemy positions. With the combination of the Breach and the arcane storm still gutting communications, there was no doubt the holomap was incomplete at best. But anything was better than nothing, and slowly, a big-picture view of the battle was beginning to take shape.  
  
Aabha sat on a crate of power cells, massaging her aching calves. Across the room, Soren had pulled Mirai and Taven aside to confer with them. Aabha sighed, feeling a twinge of guilty relief in her chest. Guilty that Mirai was privately struggling with the weight of command. Relief that Aabha didn’t have to bear that burden herself.   
  
Kit appeared above her, pressing a hot canteen into her hands. Kit sank into a seat beside her with a weary groan, slumping against Aabha’s shoulder with a sore, pained whine.   
  
“Yeah,” Aabha murmured in sympathy, pressing her head against hers. “Me too…”  
  
Aabha took a sip of hot tea and sighed, letting the tension slowly slip from her limbs. It was warm, but not nearly as warm as the woman leaning into her right side-- or the palpable absence on her left.  
  
Aabha sighed deeply. She bumped her head against Kit’s, like a cat.   
  
“How are you doing?” Aabha murmured.   
  
“Still alive,” Kit groaned.   
  
“That’s something, at least.”   
  
Kit shrugged. “It’s not much.”  
  
Aabha looked away, nodding to herself.   
  
“...It’s enough.”  
  
They were both sore and radiating heat from muscle stress, only somewhat mitigated by the Valkyries’ climate controlled armor. But together, leaning against each other, they were both soothingly warm. Aabha took a deep breath, and blew out a sigh of relief. Her arm snaked around Kit’s waist. Kit found her hand, and laced their fingers together with a squeeze.   
  
A spear haft tapped against the deck plating beside them. Aabha looked up.   
  
“My lady Exalt,” Aabha said, scrambling to her feet.   
  
“Please don’t,” Elise said, ushering Aabha back into Kit’s waiting embrace. “May I join you?”  
  
Aabha and Kit exchanged glances. “Y-Yeah. Of course.”  
  
Elise limped closer and carefully lowered herself onto another supply crate, leaning heavily on her lance. She blew out a pained, weary sigh.   
  
“Are you hurt?” Aabha asked.   
  
“No,” Elise shook her head, rueful. “That’s just me feeling my age.”  
  
“Seriously?” Kit balked. “But you fought like a monster just a couple hours ago.”  
  
Elise chuckled, half-heartedly tapping a fist against her breastplate.   
  
“Faith and fury, my friend,” Elise grinned. “Most of the time, I can only do what I can do, same as you. But briefly, in short bursts, with the Light flowing through me, I can fight like I could back in my prime. God willing.”  
  
Kit and Aabha exchanged glances. Aabha shrugged.   
  
“Are you angels?” Elise asked.   
  
Aabha shook her head. “Rakshasi,” she said.   
  
“Kitsune,” Kit offered.   
  
“I see,” Elise nodded her approval. “In my day, the only Valkyries were angels. You wear the wings well.”  
  
“Thank you, my lady,” Aabha bowed her head.   
  
“I’m no ‘lady’,” Elise smiled, rueful. “I’m retired. I hung up my spear years ago. I was there when Corinth fell to Malice, and I was there when we set Corinth free, almost two years later. I thought, that’s enough fighting for any one lifetime. So I retired. Settled down. Got married, if you can believe that.”  
  
“I _can_ believe that,” Kit murmured appreciatively.  
  
“Kit,” Aabha chided.   
  
“What brings you kids to a place like this?” Elise wondered.   
  
“We’re assisting Order asset Talon on special assignment from Order asset Sparrow,” Aabha said quietly. “We were supposed to be looking for some friends of ours, but…”  
  
Aabha trailed off. Kit squeezed her hand.   
  
“...But so far, we’ve just been trying to stay alive, and do what we can.” Kit finished.  
  
Elise nodded sagely. She met Aabha’s eyes.   
  
“...That’s enough.”  
  
Aabha nodded. She glanced away, her eyes wet.  
  
“What about you?” Aabha murmured, dabbing at her eyes with her shawl. “Were you reactivated as part of the Order’s reserve forces?”  
  
“No,” Elise explained. “And don’t get me wrong, the Watchtower Council needed every warm body they could get. But retirees are exempt from reserve activation. I volunteered.”  
  
“You _volunteered_?” Kit balked. “You already fought off one Malefic invasion. Who would willingly walk into another one?”  
  
“Knight-Commander Lorelei broadcast her emergency recall across all Order channels, including the one I had when I was still in service,” Elise said gravely. “But just before that, I received a call over my private comm channel. Distortion had all-but-wrecked the signal, but I knew the frequency. I’d know it anywhere.”  
  
“Who?” Aabha pressed.  
  
Elise’s proud visage twisted into a scowl.   
  
“...My wife,” Elise said, her jaw tight. “My wife is here, somewhere in this mess. And I intend to get her out of it.”  
  
Aabha and Kit exchanged glances. Neither of them knew what to say.   
  
“...I’m sorry,” Aabha finally managed.   
  
Elise took a deep breath.   
  
“...Don’t be,” she said evenly. “I can see that you and I aren’t too different. It can be easier if you have someone to fight for. But it can also be harder if that someone is far away.”  
  
Aabha and Kit glanced at the floor. Kit bit her lip. Aabha silently squeezed her hand.   
  
A sudden, shrill alarm blared from the strategium display. The Basilisk’s tactical staff murmured anxiously amongst themselves, tapping at the terminal controls.   
  
Soren parted the crowd like a blade through water, Mirai and Taven close at his heels.   
  
“Report,” Soren ordered.   
  
“Unknown, sir,” an officer called out.   
  
A vast shape appeared on the edge of the strategium display, stretching across the horizon and looming low in the sky, just above the treeline. Klaxons blared. Error messages and warning glyphs flashed across its surface.   
  
“Can you clean that up?” an operator wondered. “Is there something wrong with the scanner?”  
  
A deep, low rumble shivered through the Basilisk’s hull. Dread settled in Aabha’s gut. She reflexively reached for Kit in support. Soren’s comms officer, and a number of her fellow operators around the strategium table, found themselves recoiling, yanking their headsets from their ears, unable to escape the tremendous psychic presence.   
  
Soren struck his sheathed sword against the ground like a judge’s gavel. The atmosphere shifted, and his staff could breathe again, insulated from psychic overload. But even shielded from its presence, there was still a dreadful buzzing in their ears, buzzing like cicadas...  
  
They all turned, instinctively, towards the bridge viewport and the view across the hills.   
  
In the distance, a gargantuan shadow descended from the clouds-- a vast, bulbous mass with bony plates above and arrays of tentacles below. Dozens of figures split away and descended further through the trees, the behemoth in miniature, their tentacles hanging down and dragging across the ground like a bridal train.   
  
“What _is_ that?” Aabha wondered, aghast.   
  
Elise just scowled and shook her head.   
  
“Trouble.”  
  
~*~  
  
Lila woke up.   
  
She sat up and stretched, sore from sleeping on the cold metal of the Dragonfly’s cargo bay. She turned, reflexively searching, and found Lily beside her, her signature dove-gray trenchcoat balled up and used as a pillow. Vincent snorted in his sleep, unselfconsciously sprawled across Lily’s stomach. Lila smiled, despite everything.   
  
Raney was wrapped in a blanket on her sniper perch, her scope scanning the horizon. Lila got up, restless, and drew her own blanket tighter around her shoulders. She joined Raney up by the broken, drafty viewport, Raney acknowledging her with the barest of nods.   
  
Archmagus Kalani’s summoned storm raged in the distance. A tree of light bloomed above the campus city, lightning surging from its branches. A masterwork of magic that stopped both the Malefic invasion and the Order counterattack in their tracks, and now cast Raney and Lila in its otherworldly violet glow.   
  
“It’s beautiful,” Lila said, breaking the quiet.   
  
“Yeah,” Raney shrugged. “Too bad it had to knock us out of the sky.”  
  
Lila nodded. She gazed out across the grassy plains, dotted with trees, the looming campus buildings in the distance, haloed by violet lightning. She took a deep breath, and let it out slow.   
  
“...Where are they?” Lila asked at last. “Why aren’t they attacking?”  
  
“Who knows? Maybe even daemons gotta sleep sometime,” Raney suggested.   
  
Lila chuckled. “Yeah, ‘cuz us humans know all about daemons.”  
  
“You’d be surprised,” Raney muttered darkly. She glanced beside her and saw Lila staring out the window, lost in her own thoughts. She cleared her throat. “...How are you feeling, kid?”  
  
“Fine,” Lila said automatically.   
  
Raney gave her a look.   
  
“...Fried,” Lila admitted, glancing away. “Useless. Like I’m just slowing everybody down.”  
  
“It’s not a race, hon. As long as you’re still standing at the end, I call that a win.”  
  
“That’s easy for you to say,” Lila pouted. “You’re a mercenary. A badass. Me? I’m just a kid, tagging along for the ride.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“It’s not good enough,” Lila said. “There are people out there giving their all for this fight. And what have I done? I got shot out of the sky and played mechanic for a little while. And even that’s been enough to make me want to sleep for a week. I haven’t done anything!”  
  
“You survived,” Raney said gently. “That’s not nothing.”  
  
“Yeah, but it’s not a whole lot,” Lila sighed. She stared out at the storm on the horizon, balling her fists. “I want to go out there. I want to _do_ something. Something good. Something right. Something worthwhile.”  
  
“None of that means a damn thing if it gets you killed,” Raney said, firm. “Listen to me, kid. Your life is more valuable than any fifteen minutes of fame on a battlefield. You want to make a difference? Great. But putting yourself in harm's way is _not_ the way.”  
  
Lily sighed, and shook her head. “...You sound like my sister.”  
  
“You sound like my wife,” Raney chuckled. “I met her at a very… interesting time in my life. She was risking it all, fighting the good fight and I…”  
  
Raney trailed off, her expression clouding.   
  
“I was just… keeping my head down. Following orders. And trying to survive.” Raney said quietly. “She taught me that some things are worth dying for. But there’s a lot of stuff worth living for, too.”  
  
Lila nodded, somber. “...Where is she?”  
  
Raney scoffed.   
  
“Home, if she knows what’s good for her,” she shook her head. “But probably not. Knowing her, she’s probably out there, somewhere. Still fighting. Still doing what she does best.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be,” Raney shrugged. “How about you? Do you have somebody waiting for you?”  
  
“What? No!” Lila swatted the question away.   
  
Raney gave her a look. Lila cleared her throat.   
  
“I-I mean… I do. Kind of,” Lila said, sheepish. “We’ve been texting for almost two whole months now, so… I’d say things are getting pretty serious.”  
  
Raney smiled and shook her head.  
  
“Well, hon, in that case…”  
  
She turned back to her scope, and the growing shadow looming over the horizon.  
  
“I’m glad neither of us is alone tonight.”  
  
~*~  
  
Shadows loomed above the trees. They drifted like storm clouds, slow but unstoppable, columns of black smoke. Yet within the smoke, fleshy tentacles hung down and dragged along the ground, some as thick as tree trunks, fraying into multitudes of thin, sinewy tendrils. These tendrils churned the earth beneath them and sifted through the debris. Some unholy instinct drove them forward, grasping, searching, claiming. In the flickering violet twilight of Archmagus Kalani’s arcane storm, one could see silhouettes moving within the tentacles, drawn up from the ground and disappearing within the swollen, bulbous body above.   
  
Nyx watched the creatures go about their work with a dread fascination. Even at this distance, she could feel the ground shake as the dragging tentacles ripped through the wreckage. She frowned, her fingers instinctively reaching for the string of glass beads around her neck.   
  
“And you will never be alone,” she whispered, like a prayer.   
  
_Except that’s not quite true, is it?_  
  
One of the beads around her neck clouded over and began to shine with an eerie white light. Agent Harkov’s somber visage manifested over Nyx’s shoulder out of smoke and moonlight, a frail, fleeting phantom out of the corner of her eye.   
  
Some awful, wordless feeling flicked across Nyx’s face and settled like a stone in her throat. She flinched away, gasping.  
  
“My Mother taught me that what we do is holy work,” Nyx murmured. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The flesh is a cage, a prison. A vessel for suffering. But the spirit… the spirit is worth preserving. Bound together, beyond death, so they will never be alone.”  
  
Nyx reached up and clutched her horns. She shook her head, trembling.   
  
“...It’s all wrong,” she said, through gritted teeth. “I should feel them. I should hear them. But there’s nothing. No voices. No spirits. Just… flesh. Just bodies, recycled, their souls hollowed out and filled with something _else_ , sent out to kill and to die, again and again…”  
  
Nyx whimpered, and wrapped her thin arms around herself.   
  
Even as a ghost, Harkov felt an ache in his incorporeal chest. This girl was a killer-- _his_ killer, and by her actions, the murderer of countless more. And yet…  
  
Harkov reached out, and placed a hand on Nyx’s shoulder. It was a symbolic gesture; he expected his ghostly hand to just pass right through her. But he could feel the rough fabric of Nyx’s cloak beneath his fingers, and feel the trembling in her shoulders still at his touch.   
  
This girl stood astride the boundary between life and death, villain and victim, player and pawn.  
  
And when she looked up at him, eyes wet with tears, he didn’t see a monster. He didn’t see a daemon, harbinger of doom. He didn’t see a sorcerer’s apprentice, filled with grim, reverent fear.   
  
He saw a child. Lost and alone.   
  
“It’s all wrong,” Nyx whispered, blinking back tears. “I didn’t want this. I didn’t want any of this at all.”  
  
There was a bang downstairs. Nyx flinched and whirled around, dispelling Harkov’s form with a swish of her tail. She heard boots pounding on linoleum tiles after the breaching charge had blasted their way inside, voices shouting orders.  
  
Nyx fled down the hallway of the abandoned student dorms, past empty rooms and the persistent tromping of the footfalls in pursuit.   
  
_Why do you run?_ Harkov whispered into her head.   
  
_What else can I do?_ Nyx returned. _I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere._ _  
_ _  
_Nyx burst into a stairwell. There was a shout below. Lasbolts flew up at her, sparking against the railings and singing the walls. She darted up the stairs and ran up to the top floor. She scurried down the hall, picked a room, and slipped inside, kicking the door shut behind her.  
  
 _The Order won’t see it that way,_ Harkov said. _They will think that only the guilty run._ _  
_ _  
_Nyx’s eyes darted around the room. Windows-- no. Too high. Too far to fall.  
  
 _No way out. No way out._   
  
_Be calm,_ Harkov hissed urgently in her head. _Be calm, and listen to me very carefully…_ _  
_ _  
_Pathfinder Imani burst through the door, a pair of Alliance Marines at her heels. They stepped into a seemingly empty room, searching, wary.  
  
Imani drew her short, curved, sickle-like sword, alight with ghostly gray fire. She stepped forward, calling out to empty air.   
  
“The Pathfinders always find a way, whether by tech, telepath, or tracking, tried and true. Malice has left its mark on this planet, no doubt. It stains the air. Throws off our scans. But there is only one signature that matches that of the Breach exactly. And it’s right here, in this room.”  
  
Imani raised her sword. The cold gray fire wreathing the blade shone a brilliant white as she lifted it towards the ceiling.   
  
“Come out!” Imani demanded. “You cannot hide from me.”  
  
A ceiling tile slid aside. Nyx dropped down and landed in a crouch. Immediately, she had guns trained on her.   
  
Nyx studied them in the twilight, her eyes glinting in the darkness of her hood. She reached out her hand, and tossed something onto the floor. Then she raised her hands and stepped back.   
  
Imani glanced from Nyx to the object she’d thrown at her feet. She reached down and picked it up-- an orb, crescent, and three diamonds. A crest of the Order.   
  
Imani held the crescent flat in her hands and pressed a thumb to the badge’s central rob. A holographic bust of Ivan Harkov appeared in her hands, along with his credentials.   
  
“Ivan Harkov, Order Intelligence,” Imani recited. “Last posted to Redmond Hive, Copperfel, all the way in the Outer Rim. How do you have this?”  
  
Nyx reached up and took a glass bead between two fingers, shining with a murky white light. Out of smoke and shadows, Harkov’s ghost manifested before her.  
  
“Agent…?!” Imani hissed, astounded.   
  
The Alliance Marines behind her exchanged confused glances, as they could only see empty air. But Imani reached beside her and pushed their aim down towards the floor.   
  
_Pathfinder Imani_ , Harkov said, nodding. _It’s an honor to finally meet you in person._   
  
“...In a manner of speaking,” Imani said, glancing between Harkov’s ghostly visage and the holographic likeness projected from his badge. “Agent Harkov, what’s the meaning of this? What are you doing here on Providence? What happened to you? And who is this girl?”  
  
Harkov laid an almost fatherly hand on Nyx’s shoulder.   
  
_This girl saved my life_ , Harkov said. _...In a manner of speaking. And she just may be the key to saving us all._ _  
_ _  
_Nyx reached into her cloak. The troopers snapped their aim up immediately, but Imani darted out and shoved their aim back down.  
  
The Rift Needle glinted in Nyx’s hands. It glowed a sickly, eldritch green, a twin to the false sun of the Breach, high above.   
  
Imani studied the artifact, the source of so much suffering, here in the hands of something so like a child. She took a deep breath and sighed, sheathing her sword.   
  
“...Come with me,” Imani said, as gently as she could manage. “I need to bring you back to Order Intelligence. We have a _lot_ to talk about.”  
  
Nyx nodded. Silent. Inscrutable. Beside her, Harkov gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.   
  
Imani turned, speaking with her fireteam and relaying orders to the rest of Order asset Glass. Nyx felt it before she saw it. A distant rumbling. A shadow across the windows--  
  
There was an explosion of wood and plaster. Something plowed into the building and just kept going, smashing through walls and crushing tile floors to rubble. A Harvester, servant of Decay, floating lazily above the trees and dragging its tentacles along the ground below, demolishing everything in its way with its monstrous strength.   
  
Imani’s Marines hosed lasfire at the beast above them, to no avail. A writhing tentacle smashed them into a wall, crushing them to a pulp inside their armor. It engulfed them, and swallowed them up, until they were just two more silhouettes sucked up the fleshy tube to be processed in the nightmare looming above them.   
  
Nyx ducked under one grasping tentacle, whirling around and slicing open another with a slash of her scythe-bladed tail. A tentacle opened up, splitting into a dozen thinner, vine-like tendrils. A tendril curled around her knee, her wrist, her waist.  
  
“Kid!” Imani cried out, instinctive.   
  
The tentacle hoisted Nyx’s petite form off the ground, pulling her away from the ruined dorm.   
  
Imani took a running leap, the floor crumbling beneath her, and stabbed her shotel into the writhing, fleshy mass. She dragged herself up the tentacle, using her shotel as an ice-climber’s pick. She hacked at the tendrils snaring Nyx in place, her ghostfire blade parting the tentacles with ease. But where her blade passed with no resistance, her body did not-- the tentacles were sticky, like tree sap, morphing and changing, strong and solid one moment, gelatinous the next.   
  
Tendrils split off from the main tentacle and wrapped around Imani’s wrist, her waist, trapping her sword arm. She struggled and fought, to no avail.  
  
The tentacle morphed around them, drawing Imani and Nyx inside itself.   
  
In the suffocating, claustrophobic dark, Nyx could feel the minds around her. She could hear the voices of the dead, trapped, lingering. Waiting to be scraped away so their bodies could be reborn as ghouls. Nothing. Nothing but dread and silent horror--  
  
And a voice. Not Harkov’s. Not Mother’s. But someone else. A woman.   
  
A woman in black.  
  
 _You will never be alone._ _  
_ _  
_Nyx closed her eyes, and the darkness-- and the Harvester-- swallowed her up.  
  
~*~


End file.
